Gardai believe taxis are being used to transport illegal immigrants into the State in an effort to circumvent new immigration checks on trains and buses from the North.
The use of taxis from Dublin and Belfast is the latest development in an escalating cat-and-mouse struggle between immigration officers and illegal immigrants.
Over the past month, plainclothes gardai, working as immigration officers, have progressively widened checks at ports, train stations and other points of entry into the State. Using new powers given them by the former Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, in June, they have established regular control points for the first time on most routes from the UK.
However, there is growing alarm that in spite of the controls, the number of asylum-seekers is rising as fast as ever.
The new regulations, which allow the authorities to refuse entry to non-EU nationals, cut the flow of asylum-seekers by about half in July. However, the numbers have increased again. Whereas the Department of Justice was registering about 50 asylum-seekers a week at the end of July, the numbers increased to 75 in early August and 95 last week. This week, 40 applications for asylum were processed in a single day.
Since the regulations came into force at the end of June, about 450 people have been refused entry and returned to the UK. Fifteen of these applied for asylum, but were refused after the Department ruled the applications should be processed in the EU state from which they came, i.e. Britain.
Once someone has entered the State, by whatever means, they may apply for asylum. They are entitled to stay, and claim supplementary welfare benefits, while the authorities decide whether they are entitled to apply for asylum, or consider the actual application. This process can take years. For this reason, the gardai are concentrating their efforts on refusing entry to non-EU nationals without the correct papers.
This is the first time in the history of the State that immigration checks have been carried out on people arriving from the UK. However, officials are adamant this does not mean an end, for Irish and British citizens at least, to the free travel area between the two countries. The UK authorities possess similar powers, although they are not currently in use.
However, the operation of the controls has not been without controversy. It has been pointed out that non-white people are more likely to be stopped. This was borne out by a visit to Dun Laoghaire port one day last week, where the only serious check of disembarking vehicles by a team of immigration officers was on a German-registered car containing a number of black passengers.
On the same day at Connolly Station, another team of gardai, wearing signs indicating that they were immigration officers, stopped a variety of backpackers, Japanese tourists and other train passengers arriving on the one direct train from Belfast. It appears the gardai rely heavily on accent in deciding whether to allow people through or to question them further.
Although the officers generally adopt a "softly-softly" approach, offence has been caused. One woman who contacted The Irish Times returned to Ireland with her 18-year-old daughter in mid-July. The daughter, who has lived all her life in Ireland, has a Zimbabwean father. She was taken aside by an immigration officer, who asked to see her passport.
"My daughter was very distressed by this incident and sobbed herself to sleep saying repeatedly, `why didn't they stop any other Irish person?'. The answer was obvious to both of us," her mother said.
"Having moved recently and being cut adrift from her circle of friends, my daughter is dealing with young adulthood and finding her place in the world. It's an added burden to have to justify one's nationality."