Mr. William O'Dwyer:

This goes to the point made earlier in respect of the importance of protecting the outer border of the common travel area, the CTA. On that basis, our UK colleagues share a lot of information on things like visas and people of concern to the CTA generally so that individual border officers have information at their disposal to make decisions on people arriving. Advance passenger information is essentially information taken off the machine readable zone of the passport plus a few extra flight details. That is sent in advance of a flight arriving in the State. It allows for advance checks to be done on arriving passengers. Last year we made arrangements with the UK that it would be able to collect this data on Irish-registered carriers flying in and out of the UK. That arrangement has worked very well. The UK is collecting the data from at least one carrier and is seeking to obtain it from the remaining carriers.

The other point is that, from our own perspective, we are looking at putting a similar system in place around the middle of the year. It will initially start collecting advance passenger information from flights arriving from outside the EEA, but the passenger name record, PNR, directive, which my colleague will speak on shortly, will allow us to expand that collection into flights arriving from within the EEA as well. In a way data-sharing is at the heart of preserving and protecting the CTA. Those arrangements that are in place are of a long-standing nature. As Mr. Waters said earlier in respect of our powers at the Border, we have specific power to refuse a third country national who intends to travel to the UK and who would not be acceptable for entry there. There are similar provisions in the UK in respect of people who might want to come here but would not be acceptable for entry into Ireland.