Number of asylum-seekers doubles

Ninety-eight per cent of people applying for asylum in Ireland enter the State illegally by evading immigration controls rather than applying at their first point of entry, a conference has been told.

Since new controls were introduced last June on people arriving from the UK, more than 1,000 people had been refused leave to enter the State.

The number of asylum-seekers recorded last year was almost 4,000, compared to under 2,000 in 1996, Mr Brian Ingoldsby, a senior official of the Department of Justice, told the conference on the free movement of workers in Ireland. This was 10 times the level of asylum-seekers arriving in 1995, and 100 times the level five years ago, he said.

The conference was organised in Dublin by the Irish Centre for European Law to mark 25 years of free movement of EU workers in Ireland.

Mr Ingoldsby said that regulations on the movement of EU citizens within the Union worked very well from the Department's point of view. The only problem which had arisen involved the use of false or substituted French identity cards in 1996 and 1997 by some North Africans who were attempting to enter Ireland before moving on to the UK.

He pointed out that EU citizens who wished to remain in Ireland for more than three months were obliged to apply for a residence permit. However, there was no legal sanction for failing to do so. Last year 830 permits were issued to citizens of other EU states, but that was probably only a fraction of the numbers living here.

One group which tended to apply for permits was EU nationals who were married to non-EU nationals. Mr Ingoldsby cited the example of a Russian woman who faces exclusion from the UK even though she has married a British man.

"Many such couples come to Ireland so the UK national can exercise his right under the EU treaty to work here. After six months working in McDonalds or whatever the couple can return to the UK with evidence of their right to work in Ireland and the British authorities will admit them on that basis."

Mr Gerard Hogan, a law lecturer in TCD, suggested that the common travel area between Britain and Ireland was unlawful. The arrangement existed as a matter of administrative convenience but had never been sanctioned by the Oireachtas, he said.

Last year, in a case about artificial insemination monopolies, the Supreme Court had condemned a similar arrangement covering Britain and Ireland which had existed for over 40 years.

"Effectively, the common travel arrangement allows the exercise of sovereignty and immigration control to pass to another memberstate of the EU. One's right to enter Ireland as a foreign national can often be determined by an immigration officer in Heathrow," he said.

Mr Ingoldsby described the common travel arrangements as "slightly constitutional" but added that it was very much in the interests of the State to continue to operate them. Three-quarters of all journeys in and out of Ireland were accounted for by traffic within the common travel area.

The operation of the common travel area had not been "all sweetness and light" but the arrangements were to the benefit of both countries. Until last year, when the number of asylum-seekers began to increase, the level of abuse of the regulations by non-EU nationals had always been "fairly tolerable".