Ireland sparks hard border fears in Brexit deal betrayal – MP furious at 'utter hypocrisy'

By David Maddox, Political Editor, Sam Stevenson, Political News Editor

Ireland sparks hard border fears (Image: GETTY)

Concerns about the prospect of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic have surged after Dublin redeployed 100 police officers to “prevention and deportation” duties.

Meanwhile the UK has said it has "no legal obligation" to accept the return of asylum seekers from Ireland, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said

Ireland is planning to reassign 100 police officers to “prevention and deportation” with frontline duties on the border, the Telegraph has reported.

Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee says the move is aimed at to prevent people from abusing the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK as a way of entering Ireland to claim asylum.

ERG Chairman, Mark Francois, said: “So, the Irish Government, who lectured us for years, literally, during the Brexit negotiations, that they could never tolerate any kind of hard border whatsoever on the island or Ireland are about to re-introduce exactly that.

“This isn’t blarney - it’s utter hypocrisy - and they deserve to be called out for it.”

Speaking at Downing Street, Rish Sunak’s spokesman said there was an existing understanding and operational procedure with the Irish Government regarding the common travel area, he said.

He said: "There is no legal obligation to accept the return of asylum seekers who enter across the common travel area and my understanding is no asylum seekers have ever been returned to the UK under these existing arrangements.

"As the Prime Minister set out yesterday, we're not going to accept returns from the EU via Ireland at a time when the EU doesn't accept returns back to France."

He said the Prime Minister did not recognise the figure that 80 percent of asylum seekers arriving in Ireland were coming from the UK via Northern Ireland, but added the UK does not collect that data as there are no checks at land borders with Northern Ireland.

"It's up to the Irish Government to collect data on people within Ireland," he said.