Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Apologies, I had to go to the Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting, where Brexit is on the agenda as well. Our work here involves looking at the various options. We do not know what the EU will look for, and everyone is looking at the North being a back door into Britain and wondering how the common travel area can be sustained. The EU's concern is that it does not want us to be a back door from the UK into the EU, and that issue was raised at the House of Lords, where Mike Nesbitt brought up the issue of the Border being in the middle of the Irish Sea. I brought that up yesterday when we were having meetings with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in Westminster. They already have Operation Gull in place in Northern Ireland, where they have immigration officers checking people travelling from Derry, Belfast and Larne into Britain. Formalising that and having a standardised check so that everybody leaving the island of Ireland would be checked for immigration would mean that there would be no necessity for any checks on people going over and back across the border. These are all different scenarios based on what the EU might propose. It was reported in The Guardianthat it was proposed in the House of Lords that Ireland would be installing UK immigration officers at our ports and taking an all-island approach, which is unacceptable. Has that been explored with the British authorities? It is an unwelcome piece of kite flying.

A professor with an interest in this area has spoken about Protocols Nos. 19 and 20 which allow the common travel area and said that it is not incompatible with EU law. Does the witness have a view on that? Are we going to have to enforce UK immigration law and EU immigration law on people who are entering and leaving this island?

The figures provided are interesting. We are working on it in the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. It is difficult to get accurate figures for the numbers of people travelling over and back across the Border. We hear of 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 people travelling over and back across the Border every day for work and study. When one looks at the census results from 2011 - I am sure the witness has seen them - there are 14,751 people doing this. The witness gave us figures. When we looked for research on those who leave the island of Ireland and going to Britain every day who are Irish passport holders the figure was 5,722.

Our position is based on the facts. Our first wish is for the status quoto remain because we would like to retain what we have. We then have to ask if we can retain the common travel area and ensure that whatever restrictions the EU might put on it do not impinge on people. If that is not possible, can we ensure that the Border between the North and South remains open and that all checks are carried out on the island of Ireland? That requires Britain to reinstate what it did during a period between 1939 and 1952, when it imposed what was effectively immigration controls between Northern Ireland and Britain.

Getting the hard facts and having a position based on that is the key to the common travel area. We have to consider the practicality of this. We all travel over and back between Ireland and Britain. People travel from France into Britain. France is in Schengen. What is the difference for somebody who is arriving from France into Britain today? What passport controls do they have to go through? Is it a simple matter of producing one's passport? Ireland is not in Schengen. France is in Schengen. Are citizens treated differently, and if so what is the difference? How does it compare to the people who travel over and back across the Border every day? At yesterday's meeting with the British Members of Parliament it was said that they could not possibly formalise an immigration control check that they have in Derry, Belfast and Larne. Some 792 people who were trying to get into Britain through Northern Ireland by travelling to the Republic and crossing the Border have been arrested in one calendar year. Once the word gets out that everybody trying to get into Britain through Northern Ireland will get caught then nobody is going to bother trying to get into Britain via that route. Britain seems to be saying that it might put seamless or frictionless controls on the Border. The only people that affects are people who are travelling back and forth and going about their daily business on this island, and it will not affect those people positively.

Is it the case that Protocols Nos. 19 and 20 mean that our common travel area does not affect EU law? We are having a big battle over the common travel area. Is there a difference in how a person from France who is travelling to Britain today is treated compared to a person from Ireland? Is it worth having this battle? The most important battle is making sure that we do not have border checks on this island. When we emphasise this to public representatives here and in America and elsewhere, it is said that if an electronic border checkpoint is put up and it is shot then a fence has to be erected. If the fence is taken down a soldier has to be installed to protect it. The soldier might then get shot. That is how these things can escalate. We are trying to convey to our European colleagues that this is not the border between Norway and Sweden. This is a post-conflict society that is still emerging from conflict.