{"id":571329,"date":"2026-07-06T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/571329\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T10:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T10:00:13","slug":"immigration-will-increase-challenges-to-the-common-travel-area-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/571329\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration will increase challenges to the Common Travel Area \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking at legislation to change the Common Travel Area<\/a> (CTA) in the House of Lords in London<\/a> on April 1st 2009, Robin Valerian Dixon \u2013 Lord Glentoran \u2013 was a worried man.<\/p>\n

The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill proposed by British Labour Party home secretary Jacqui Smith wanted passports to be shown by those entering Britain from the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.<\/p>\n

However, the Antrim<\/a>-born Dixon saw problems ahead for the North<\/a>. Given the open Irish Border, checks would inevitably end up being made not across the Irish Border, but between Northern Ireland and Britain, he feared.<\/p>\n

Even word of the eventually-unsuccessful legislation had changed attitudes, he told peers at the time, describing how British politicians returning to London a few days before through George Best Airport in Belfast<\/a> had been told to produce passports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never been asked for a passport going in or out of there in my life but somebody jumped the gun then. It was an example of what might happen,\u201d said the former Olympic bobsleigher.<\/p>\n

Dixon appears to have understood what a later generation of unionist politicians do not \u2013 that tighter immigration checks between the Republic and Britain will inevitably affect Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

The CTA offers Irish and British citizens the right to travel passport-free \u2013 but, more importantly, to live and work freely \u2013 in the Republic, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.<\/p>\n

Agreed in 1923, though lacking any single legislative text backing it up, the CTA was an outcome of the departure of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom after independence.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish officials were warned in advance that Irish travellers would have faces scanned at HolyheadOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The year before, the British home office had considered the immigration controls needed after Irish independence, before recoiling in horror at the prospect of checks along the Irish Border.<\/p>\n

In return, the newly-established Irish authorities quietly agreed in February 1923 to respect London\u2019s immigration decisions, including keeping out people who were personae non gratae to the British.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the beginning, the Home Office and its Irish equivalents have always shared information. That\u2019s always been part of the arrangement,\u201d says Bernard Ryan, professor of migration law at University of Leicester.<\/p>\n

The Jacqui Smith-proposed curbs of 15 years ago failed then, but immigration is more complicated than ever, especially after last month\u2019s Belfast riots started after a man was stabbed in the city.<\/p>\n

Following the attack, a slew of unionist politicians \u2013 the Democratic Unionist Party\u2019s Gavin Robinson and Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice, but others, too \u2013 demanded action.<\/p>\n

The \u201copen, porous Border\u201d should be closed, argued Robinson in House of Commons exchanges, while Allister said the CTA had never been designed to \u201cprovide freedom of movement for illegal migrants\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today, however, there is zero enthusiasm shown in London to heed unionist calls, while co-operation and trust between Dublin and London remains high, even if everyone can see points of weakness.<\/p>\n

The CTA has not operated for all of its existence. It was suspended on the outbreak of the second World War, with work permits, travel restrictions and identity checks required for travel across the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n

\"AA ferry arrives in Larne from Cairnryan, Scotland in April 2022. Photograph: Andrew Testa\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

However, the same checks were imposed on ferry travel from Larne, Derry and Belfast in Northern Ireland to British ports and continued until 1952 when the curbs on the Republic fell away.<\/p>\n

In an unsuccessful 1948 bid to get the controls removed, Ulster Unionist MP Conolly Hugh Gage said they \u201ccaused acute and growing resentment\u201d among \u201call classes\u201d in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Wartime rules were borne with fortitude, he told MPs: \u201cBut we are now in the third year of peace, and yet we still have this system which is increasingly obnoxious to us in Ulster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, passport-free travel rights have been long been overtaken by the demands of most airlines, bar British Airways, for passports to be shown before passengers board flights.<\/p>\n

Equally, the Irish authorities passed immigration legislation in 1997 that ignored the passport-free rights enshrined in the agreement, since passengers from British airports must show identification but not necessarily passports.<\/p>\n

Publicly, the demand on Irish or British travellers is for passports, though some \u2013 including the former British Airways and Aer Lingus chief executive Willie Walsh \u2013 have long insisted on showing a driving licence, as the law allows.<\/p>\n

The British rules, however, are stricter, since no powers exist there to carry out mandatory, or random checks, as former senior UK Border Force official David Wood recalls. <\/p>\n

On occasion, UK Border Force immigration officers would \u201coccasionally\u201d be put on duty at Stranraer in Scotland to monitor passengers getting off the Larne ferry, says Wood, who left the Border Force in 2015.<\/p>\n

Using powers to check if they had reasonable suspicion, officers would stop people if they were \u201cacting furtively, or if they had no luggage when everyone else had. But, it\u2019s all a subjective call\u201d, says Wood.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the Belfast attack last month, the focus was on the numbers who came to the Republic and who then crossed the Border to claim asylum in Northern Ireland, or in Great Britain.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Sudanese man Hadi Alodid now facing charges in Belfast travelled from Sudan to Paris and on to Dublin, before travelling by bus to Belfast in February 2023, without seeking to claim asylum in either France, or the Republic.<\/p>\n

However, the Department of Justice insists the vast majority of such traffic is not South to North but rather in the other direction, saying nearly 88 per cent of those who claimed asylum in Dublin last year, or 11,557 people, came via Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Definitive numbers are not possible, according to the department, because of the lack of routine border checks, but its number, it says, is based on interviews with asylum seekers, or those working in the field.<\/p>\n

Privately, British officials have long cast doubt on the Irish numbers. They have always been careful not to pick a public fight with Dublin but they insist significant numbers cross the Border into Northern Ireland. <\/p>\n

Information about passengers is shared between the two states, and some issues caused by Brexit<\/a> have been overcome.<\/p>\n

European Union<\/a> data protection rules upset the data sharing that was taking place after June 2021, bar in exceptional cases, because of concerns in Brussels that UK protections did not match EU standards.<\/p>\n

A data adequacy Brussels\/London agreement just before Christmas last year restored the ability to share personal data about people until 2031, though subject to a review during its lifetime.<\/p>\n

However, it did not grant the UK access to EU\u2019s security and migration databases, notably the Eurodac fingerprint system \u2013 a major blow to its ability to curb irregular border crossings.<\/p>\n

Remembering his time as minister for justice, former Fianna F\u00e1il TD Dermot Ahern said he was concerned after the 2007 terrorist attacks in London that Ireland could be used as \u201ca backdoor to England\u201d.<\/p>\n

He tried to engage then Conservative home secretary and later British prime minister Theresa May to improve controls, especially speeding up co-operation between British police and garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just about immigration. Al Qaeda was bombing Britain. I often said to [then taoiseach] Bertie [Ahern], \u2018We could be used as a stepping stone by these fellows.\u2019 But I couldn\u2019t make common cause with London,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In March, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin and British prime minister Keir Starmer agreed to share more immigration data, though the details of the arrangement were unclear. <\/p>\n

In addition, steps are due to be taken to ensure that the CTA\u2019s rights to work and benefits \u2013 all the more complicated to manage because neither state has national ID cards \u2013 are not abused.<\/p>\n

The challenges to the CTA will become more frequent, not less, says Ryan. Debate should centre on its immigration role, not \u201cthis benign agreement about British and Irish citizens having rights in the other\u201d, the academic says.<\/p>\n

Immigration will \u201calways\u201d present huge challenges, Ryan adds. \u201cOnce you accept that, it\u2019s always going to be messy to come up with arrangements acceptable to the public, and which can work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s EU exit makes matters harder, with mismatching rules and \u201craised expectations on the UK side, particularly in Northern Ireland, about what sovereignty means. Expectations that are unrealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public consent must be won, says Ryan.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s have an open and honest debate about them, so that we can hopefully get an acceptance of why things are the way they are, and work through it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking at legislation to change the Common Travel Area (CTA) in the House of Lords in London on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[17296,663,9,10,6504,61466,23935,31778,52,18,2219,13,14,40332,6,93810,19,56,17,51351,11,12,130,15,16,5,954,7,8,51350,393],"class_list":["post-571329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-antrim","tag-belfast","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-brexit","tag-common-travel-area","tag-common-ground","tag-democratic-unionist-party","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-european-union","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-gavin-robinson","tag-headlines","tag-house-of-commons","tag-ie","tag-immigration","tag-ireland","tag-jim-allister","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-london","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-traditional-unionist-voice","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116872454310054057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}