A furious row has erupted with Ireland after a government source revealed the UK would not take back asylum seekers who cross the border into Ireland “until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France”.
The comment from the government source comes as tensions have escalated over the Irish government’s plans to implement new legislation which would see asylum seekers cross the border from Northern Ireland to be sent back to the UK.
Last week, Irish justice minister Helen McEntee told a parliamentary committee that 80 percent of arrivals in the recent times came via the border. Following the heated exchange, Irish prime minister Simon Harris said the country would “not provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges”.
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Despite the plans, a UK government source has said that any bid for the return of asylum seekers to the UK would only be accepted, if France did the same thing with boats across the Channel. The movement of migrants into Ireland has been blamed on the threat of deportation to Rwanda, since the bill was passed last week.
Ireland’s deputy prime minister and foreign secretary Micheal Martin told the Daily Telegraph: “Maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.”
On Sunday, prime minister Rishi Sunak told Sky News that the scheme was already working as a deterrent.
