The number of lapdancing clubs in Ireland is growing, but when doestitillation turn into exploitation?
Eva from Estonia wants a man standing at the bar to buy her a drink. He brushes her off but she smiles and insists. The man is middle-aged and overweight. He is wearing a suit and tie and is the worse for wear for drink in the most obnoxious way possible.
Eva is in her 20s. She is tall, slim and strikingly good-looking. She is wearing, well, not very much. Eva is a lap dancer. It's 1.30 a.m. on Friday morning in one of Dublin's "gentlemen's clubs".
Just hours earlier a District Court judge refused to renew licences for the Barclay Club, a similar Dublin establishment, after he accepted evidence from two gardaí that they saw a naked performer being groped by a customer.
But in the small hours of Friday morning nobody here seems to care. The club is packed to capacity and business is absolutely booming.
Earlier in the evening the scene had been slightly different. About 20 scantily clad dancers sit on stools around the bar. Some of the women seem more eager than others to drum up business. They approach men and crack a joke in an effort to strike up a conversation. But most simply look bored, determined not to try too hard.
As Thursday night turns into Friday morning it is not difficult to see why most of the women do not feel the need to work the room. Early on there is about one dancer for every punter in the bar. But after midnight the men outnumber the women 10 to one.
There are private rooms off the main bar where the lapdancing takes place. For frugal clients a three-minute topless dance costs €15. For the more extravagant a 45-minute dance costs €450. Time is money.
Up until the mid-1990s there were no lapdancing clubs in Ireland. But since the first one opened in Dublin six years ago the industry has grown exponentially. Almost every major city in Ireland now has at least one, and in Dublin there are half a dozen in the city centre.
The Garda raid on the Barclay Club in South William Street, which led to this week's court case, was simply a routine check.
Only time will tell whether the gardaí have decided to clamp down on the industry with more concerted scrutiny of clubs. However, one well-placed source in the industry told The Irish Times this week "there seems to have been a direction from a high enough level in the guards to take a harder line".
The same source said there was at least one raid on a Dublin club this week. "Nothing wrong was found to be going on and lapdancing itself is legal. It just means clubs will be really keeping an eye on the no touching policy."
For its part the Barclay Club, which is appealing this week's court ruling and so remains open, insists it did nothing wrong. The club claimed in court the groping witnessed last October by gardaí inspecting the premises was "at best an isolated incident".
But not everyone is so sure lapdancing is just harmless fun. In December the Irish authorities suspended indefinitely the issue of work permits for lap-dancers after concerns of exploitation of the migrant workers were expressed. Dr Pauline Conroy, a social policy analyst who recently conducted research on migrant workers for the Equality Authority, has said work permits should not be issued to promote the "sex industry".
The Ruhama women's project, which works with prostitutes, believes clubs can foster prostitution. Last year the group brought Louise Eek, a Swedish former lap-dancer and prostitute, to Ireland to speak about her experience of the sex industry. Lapdancing, she said, has nothing to do with sexuality. It is about men using money to exploit women for exploitation's sake.
"If I say I don't want to do this for you, [a man] can always go down the line and find someone else to do the service, or he can offer more money. It's an industry created by men for other men."