Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. My colleagues have asked some of the questions to which I was interested in hearing answers. One issue that has come up also came up with the House of Lords and was raised by civil rights groups. In the current context of the UK's membership of the EU, it has instituted Operation Gull, which has been accused of racially profiling people who are travelling from Northern Ireland into Britain, and has immigration officers in place already. This has been happening for a number of years, prior to the Brexit vote. In one calendar year, 792 people who tried to enter Britain from Northern Ireland were arrested. Have the witnesses a view on what has been happening and do they see it being continued or formalised?

The solution put forward by many of those who have presented to the committee is that a way to operate immigration controls is outside of what they are proposing in terms of social welfare and health access, which is to restrict people's movement into the UK because they will not be able to access those services. It has already instituted what would be regarded as racial profiling in Northern Ireland for those who are leaving. Instead of having immigration controls along the Border between the North and the South, we have made a proposal. There probably will be custom controls but the idea of stopping people going over and back to work or college every day is farcical given that it could not secure the Border in the height of the Troubles. It is, therefore, hardly likely it will be able to do it in terms of Brexit.

Have the witnesses a view on what should be done at Derry, Belfast and Larne? Should Operation Gull be suspended? Alternatively, should the UK institute its immigration controls in Northern Ireland rather than trying to have Border controls on people travelling between the North and the South? It seems bizarre. We had members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of the House of Commons here and we outlined that there already are immigration controls between Northern Ireland and Britain. Rather than instituting a reinstatement of the Border, the immigration controls in the UK that were there between 1939 and 1952, when it required people travelling from Northern Ireland to Britain to produce identification documentation as if they were travelling from the Republic, should be formalised. What are the witnesses' views on Operation Gull?