Distinctions between lawful migration, temporary immigration and residence, and asylum seeking are real and important. EU citizens have a right under EU law to migrate to other member states to engage in employment and economic activity, but not simply for long-term residence by choice.
Nationals of both Ireland and the UK have freedom of migration and residence. Ireland also accords limited migration rights for nationals of other non-EU states for a variety of essential reasons, including employment and education, subject to the requirements of our own residence laws.
The open border within the Ireland-UK common travel area creates a unique problem for Ireland in terms of asylum seeking. When she was minister for justice, Helen McEntee estimated that at least 80 per cent of asylum seekers (excluding Ukrainian refugees) in Ireland had travelled here via the UK. More recently, current Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has implied the 80 per cent figure mentioned by his predecessor could be even higher, perhaps more than 87 per cent.
If nearly 90 per cent of asylum seekers in Ireland travel through the UK to make claims in Ireland, we need to ask some fundamental questions. Why do they not claim asylum in the UK – perhaps the first safe country (but more likely not the first safe country) they have travelled through? What is it about Ireland that makes this country a destination of choice for asylum seekers?
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Some point to the fact Ireland’s laws in relation to asylum seeking are subject to EU law and standards. This would, for instance, probably exclude the Irish State from adopting Rwanda-type solutions and therefore gives a greater security to would-be asylum-seekers. However, this seems an unlikely explanation.
Others suggest, I think more plausibly, that enforcement of the law as it relates to failed asylum seekers in Ireland is less effective than in the UK. Others cite the right given to asylum-seekers to seek employment where their status has not been speedily determined arising out of a decision by the Supreme Court. The use of the English language here has also been suggested as a pull factor.
When he was minister with responsibility for migration, Roderic O’Gorman told the Irish people we should expect annual asylum-seeking applications of around 20,000 to 30,000 as the new normal. Current yearly applications are lower than that, ranging between 12,000 and 18,000.
Estimates for 2026 for expenditure on asylum and international protection services provision is of the order of €3.4 billion. Apart from the cost of Ukrainian refugees, we are spending more than €1.2 billion annually on accommodation alone for other asylum seekers and international protection applicants. On top of that, there are significant subsistence payments and administrative costs.
Nobody has advanced an economically sustainable alternative to direct provision of one kind or another for asylum applicants.
While nothing is certain in politics, there is a very realistic possibility that the next general election in the UK will result in a government being formed by Nigel Farage’s Reform party on its own, or in some form of alliance with the Tories. Reform’s rhetoric suggests that, if it gets into government, it might well aspire to imitating the immigration and mass deportation policies now being deployed in the US by the Trump administration.
How such a political development would sit with current common travel area arrangements and open, invisible borders between Ireland and the UK is a serious issue for our Government to consider. Perhaps we will be spared such a scenario. But it cannot be ignored.
Hard-right activists have been seeking to exploit asylum seeking and IPAS centre-related issues to mobilise public opinion for the last 18 months.
All migration into Ireland – legal migration or asylum and international protection-seeking – creates pressure in areas such as housing demand, health services, childcare and education provision. That is inevitable. The phenomenon of economic migration posing as asylum and international protection-seeking is, however, a real problem, not merely for Ireland, but for Europe including the UK. It needs a measured, honest political response at national level and at European level.
EU members made a significant error in inscribing justiciable provisions for asylum seeking by non-EU nationals into the EU’s Charter for Fundamental Rights. There was no popular demand for such a provision. Only the Danes were alert enough to reserve their position and copperfasten their sovereign rights in that area as far as adherence to EU treaty law is concerned.
Combined with accordance of related competences to the EU itself, the result has been a deeply divisive and corrosive fracture-line within the EU and within the politics of member states. The case for revisiting these issues at EU level is compelling. The migration pact is no answer – it is not even a sticking plaster. Ireland is simply not going to realise any results with implementing the migration pact. The Danes were not wrong. Simon Harris, please note.
