Laws to be changed to stop increased number of asylum seekers coming from UK via Northern Ireland, Simon Harris says

Over 80pc of people applying for asylum in Ireland are coming from the UK over the land Border with Northern Ireland, Justice Minister Helen McEntee said earlier this week.

Mr Harris has now said this raises “very serious issues” and Minister McEntee will bring forward law changes shortly.

She will also meet UK’s Home Secretary James Cleverly next week, he said.

“It does show the scale of the challenge here. We do have a situation where we have a porous border,” he said.

“It raises very serious issues. It’s going to require legislative change. We’re going to need to change the law, in my view, in relation to this, and we’re going to have to change it very quickly.

“We need to have a process in place where if somebody has status in another country, in this case the UK, and comes here seeking for asylum, then they should be returned to Britain.”

He said law changes will be brought forward by Minister McEntee quickly.

However, he ruled out people being stopped at the border.

“If you have been to the UK and you have been granted status - why are you coming to Ireland and looking for immigration status? There needs to be a legal mechanism in place and I believe this will require primary legislation to be able to return people to the UK,” the Taoiseach said.

He said the Irish international protection system is all about “fairness” and not about people who live safely in another country, have status there and then come to Ireland and seek immigration status.

Plans from Justice Minister Helen McEntee this week to further clamp down on the number of asylum seekers coming into the country are “more agile” than “previous proposals”, the Taoiseach said.

Today's News in 90 Seconds - April 25th

Meanwhile, Fine Gael have strongly condemned a social media video from Sinn Féin, where Cork TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said the party is “opposed to open borders”. He sai d the Government should not opt into the “entire” EU Migration Pact because it “ties” the hands of future Governments and cedes power to the EU.

Mr Harris said the comments were “very worrying” and “very peculiar”.

“What we don’t need is right wing, Tory rhetoric. What we do need is effective solutions.”

Senior Fine Gael Minister Heather Humphreys compared these comments to those made by Nigel Farage and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“The only open border that we have is with Northern Ireland,” she told the Dáil.

“You know what we heard from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson on Brexit. It’s time to take back our borders and we know how that ended up, so we need to be careful here.”