The State will have to co-operate “much more closely” with UK authorities to ensure there are fewer illegal border crossings from Northern Ireland into the Republic, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
Mr Varadkar said there has been an increase in people “coming from north to south, people coming from Britain or Northern Ireland into the Republic and seeking international protection here”.
The Taoiseach was answering questions from Independent TD Mattie McGrath in relation to deportations and security at airports in the Dáil on Tuesday.
The Fine Gael leader said he had recently met with the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) and the Border Management Unit of the Department of Justice to discuss “how we can improve our border security and make sure that people who shouldn’t get into the State aren’t able to get into State”.
“We have a very close co-operation with the United Kingdom authorities in relation to the Common Travel Area and what they certainly said to me is that they’ve seen a big decrease in the number of people coming through the airport and then claiming international protection and that is, at least in part down to the fact that the gardaí are stopping more people coming off the planes to check their documents, which means that they can be kept on the plane if they don’t have documents,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said UK authorities had reported a rise in people “coming from north to south, people coming from Britain or Northern Ireland into the Republic and seeking international protection here”.
“What we’re not going to do is start doing wholescale checks on people crossing the border from north to south for all sorts of reasons that I don’t think I need to explain…but it is an issue,” he said.
“I think it’s one of the ways we are going have to co-operate much more closely with the UK authorities to make sure that there are fewer irregular arrivals to Britain and Ireland because we form a Common Travel Area and definitely something I want to discuss with Prime Minister Sunak in the near future.”
Mr Varadkar also said there have been around 600 deportation orders issued in recent months and authorities were working on “increasing the number of deportations to countries in transit and countries of origins”.
“These are people who have applied for international protection and have been refused it because they weren’t entitled to essentially - their story didn’t check out or didn’t meet the standard that we set for people to get international protection,” he said.
