A recruitment agency for lap dancers will open in Dublin next week to meet a new demand for legal dancers in the wake of the recent Garda raids of clubs throughout the State.
The UK-based Cheeky Model Management agency wants to recruit and train Irish women to dance in clubs, and promises they will be able to earn "loads of money" and work flexible hours.
The agency's owner, Ms Samantha Martin, said there is a huge demand in Ireland for lap dancers, and this greatly increased following last month's high-profile Operation Quest. A total of 101 people were arrested following those raids on 10 premises in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway and Dundalk, and Garda investigations are ongoing.
Dancers arrested included immigrants from eastern Europe who were working illegally, some with expired work permits and others on tourist visas.
Ms Martin, herself a former lap dancer, said the Garda operation left "a huge gap in the market" for dancers in Ireland. Her company, with offices in Manchester and London and around 130 women on its books, supplies 10 dancers daily to a Cork lap dancing club, The Great Escape. "But if I met the demand I am being asked for, I would probably need 50 girls a day in Ireland," she said.
The agency will be the first such business to open an office in Ireland, where growing concerns about criminal involvement led the authorities to indefinitely suspend issuing work permits to foreign workers last summer.
Ms Martin said she planned to "actively recruit" Irish women to work as lap dancers to meet domestic demand. While acknowledging there was public unease about the industry in Ireland, Ms Martin said this would not deter her business plans.
The Ruhama Women's Project, a group which works with prostitutes, has called for lap dancing clubs to be banned because of their "inevitable" links to prostitution.
However, Ms Martin said her dancers would only be placed in reputable establishments which did not tolerate prostitution and with strict contractual rules governing work practices. She estimated that a beginner in Ireland could earn €500 a week, with weekly incomes of between €1,000 and €3,000 for more experienced dancers.
Lap dancers perform erotic private dances involving striping in front of customers, for around €30 a dance. The agency charges club owners a flat fee for each dancer supplied.