UK tells Dublin: We won’t let you send back migrants
AN Irish government plan to send asylum seekers back to Britain was met with a point-blank refusal last night.
Ministers in the republic have pledged to unveil emergency legislation this week which would allow them to return migrants to Northern Ireland following concern over an up-tick in numbers.
But UK Government sources said there would be no deal unless Brussels also agreed to take back migrants who cross the Channel in small boats.
Irish justice minister Helen McEntee has said that more than 80 per cent of the country’s asylum seekers now cross the border from Northern Ireland.
A UK Government source said: ‘We won’t accept any asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France. We are fully focused on operationalising our Rwanda scheme and will continue working with the French to stop the boats.’
Tory MP Sir John Redwood said ‘it takes my breath away’ that Ireland wants a ‘closed border’ with Northern Ireland ‘having said it was crucial to the Good Friday Agreement and to the post-Brexit settlement’. He added: ‘As Britain has always been told, we cannot send migrants back to France and so how on earth do they think they could send migrants back to the UK?’
Detailing Ireland’s plans, Taoiseach Simon Harris said it would be ‘quite appropriate’ for his country to send asylum seekers back to Northern Ireland. ‘This country will not in any way, shape or form provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges. That’s very clear.
‘My colleague, the minister for justice, will now bring forward legislative proposals to the cabinet on Tuesday that will seek to put in place a new returns policy. We’re going to await the full details of that but it’s one which will effectively allow, again, people to be returned to the United Kingdom. And I think that’s quite appropriate.’