Cabinet considers ‘more robust’ border controls to curb illegal entry
THE Government is set to consider how it can have more ‘appropriate and robust’ border controls, the Taoiseach has said.
It comes as the three Coalition leaders stressed at a postCabinet briefing last night that the population of the country had grown rapidly as a result of ‘unprecedented numbers’ arriving into Ireland.
Asked about the protests in Ballymun, Dublin, and elsewhere in the country against immigrants being moved into communities, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that it was important that local people were ‘consulted’.
However, he added: ‘I think it’s very important as well that any protests are peaceful and that there should be no hatred or racism directed towards any people under any circumstances.’
Some 70,000 Ukrainians have come to Ireland since the Russian invasion, and there were also 14,000 people who also entered the country last year and claimed international protection.
Mr Varadkar said: ‘I think one thing we definitely could do, and we were speaking about this at the Cabinet meeting earlier, is make sure that decisions are made much more quickly so that if somebody is genuinely a refugee and they’re entitled to international protection that they get it.
‘But also that those who come here to claim international protection and aren’t entitled to it, that they get a decision in the negative as quickly as possible.’
He said in the next couple of weeks the Government would look at how the State could have ‘more appropriate and more robust border controls’ to make sure that people aren’t able to enter the country illegally, because the vast majority of people who come here from overseas do so legally.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin also said that the protests that had occurred in recent days had ‘crossed a line’.
‘When it comes to protests outside where people are living, that is crossing the line,’ Mr Martin said.
He said people were entitled to debate policy, but that there needed to be a level of decency and respect shown.
Mr Varadkar said that open borders would be retained between the North and the Republic and the Common Travel Area would respected, as would freedom of movement within the EU.
Mr Varadkar said the Government had international obligations that it would ‘honour’.
‘It’s important to make sure that we implement the rules, and rules say that if somebody has already claimed asylum for example, in another European country, under the Dublin convention they’re supposed to stay there or return there. It’s important that if somebody wants to go to Ireland to work as an economic migrant that they go about it the right way to apply for work permit.’
He said the State had granted 50,000 work permits last year for people to fill jobs in Ireland.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Simon Harris said an incident outside a shelter for migrants in Ballymun in north Dublin was ‘intimidation’ and not a protest.
Videos emerged over the weekend of a crowd of people outside a building in Ballymun where families were living, chanting ‘get them out’, with one person holding a sign saying ‘Ireland is full’.
‘We’ve to be very careful calling these protests. In my mind, that’s not what they are. In my mind, when people turn up outside a building that is providing temporary shelter to people, including women and children, and start saying things like “shout to get them out, out, out”, that’s not a protest. In my view, that’s intimidation.
‘In my view, it is not in any way, shape or form reflective of the communities which these accommodation facilities are in.’
Mr Harris praised Dublin Lord Mayor Caroline Conroy, a native of Ballymun, for showing ‘excellent leadership on this’.
He said: ‘She very clearly and articulately made the point about, of course, the importance of working with communities, of course, the importance of keeping communities informed, of course, the importance of providing information, but not allowing anybody to hijack the viewpoints of a community.’
Ms Conroy said the scenes were ‘embarrassing’ and ‘upsetting’, and she believed the protests had been orchestrated, adding: ‘It’s not what we’re about in Ballymun.’
Mr Harris said: ‘It is a statement of the blinding obvious that there are certain individuals who travel from one part of our country to the next part of our country to the next part of our country.’
‘It’s important to implement the rules’