Justice Minister Helen McEntee has stepped back from attending today’s British Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) in London, according to a spokesperson. The decision came following the British officials’ last-minute cancellation of a sidebar meeting that was set for Ms McEntee and Home Secretary James Cleverly.
The minister’s spokesperson stated she’ll be meeting with senior officials in Dublin instead and expressed regret that she won’t be joining the BIIGC conference today, which Tánaiste Micheál Martin will be attending. She also expressed anticipation for the rescheduled meeting with the Home Secretary.
It’s been reported that several of the minister’s top officials are already in London, as they were supposed to be present at the intergovernmental conference. Following the abrupt rescheduling of the late Sunday evening meeting between Helen McEntee and her UK counterpart James Cleverly, this now leaves Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin as the sole representative of the government at the meeting.
A spokesperson for Ms McEntee explained that the Monday afternoon meeting in London with British Home Secretary James Cleverly has been deferred and will be convened again shortly. The home office reportedly informed the Irish Department of Justice about an unexpected schedule conflict.
The meeting was meant to be held amid heightened tensions between London and Dublin regarding the surge of migrants across the border, which the Justice Department approximates to be more than 80% of all international protection applicants.
Recently, in response to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s claim that the increased influx into Ireland supported his controversial plan to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, Taoiseach Simon Harris stated that Ireland wouldn’t serve as a shortcut for other nations’ migration problems. “I unequivocally won’t permit anyone else’s immigration policy to compromise the purity of our own,” he added.
Political insiders in Ireland’s capital have conjectured that an initial postponement of a crucial meeting may have been effected to allow tempers to simmer down. The two head figures who were expected to calibrate the optimal functioning of the Common Travel Area and discuss methods of mitigating its misuse, found themselves at a stalemate, indicating friction between British and Irish sides, with the latter finding Mr. Sunak’s remarks excessively incendiary.
An Irish governmental source further opines that the impending UK elections, hovering just 72 hours away, contribute a political dimension to this shift.
Meanwhile, the plans to recommend asylum seekers who entered via the Border back to their home countries are entering the final stages of legislation drafting by Ms McEntee. Once this emergency legislation is passed, the swift return of asylum seekers to the UK will commence. The government is contemplating if people arriving from the UK could be returned there or to their native country post-processing in Ireland, which, according to some circles, could play a crucial role as a deterrent.
The comments made by Mr Sunak were met with sharp opposition among coalition cohorts over the weekend, instigating the belief that the Conservative Party in the UK is strategically capitalising on the immigrants’ influx into Ireland for political leverage.
Simultaneously, the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) has voiced issues over the Irish Government’s intention to expedite the repatriation of Nigerian asylum seekers – a number which has seen a considerable rise, most of whom are believed to have migrated from the UK.
The IRC’s CEO, Nick Henderson, expressed concerns over fast-tracking applications and highlighted the need for each case to be treated on its merits and not based on their source country. He further indicated that plans to consider Nigeria on the safe countries list for 2023 had been mooted and not actualised and that the fast-tracking process may infringe on human rights norms if legal aid were not afforded accordingly.
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