Ms Una Boyd:

We did a joint body of work with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties on this during which we engaged with the Garda. The response was essentially to say that the checks focus on trafficking. They argued that they were intelligence-led checks, which is also what the UK Home Office likes to call them. There was not really any engagement on the actual impact of the checks on people or on the reports we have of racist and discriminatory behaviour. We have never had any documents or information provided on how the Garda trains its officers to deal with this. One response we got was that the Garda asks everyone to show their passport and that if British and Irish citizens feel that they are being checked unlawfully, they can show their passport. Essentially, the argument was that people can show their passport to prove that they do not need to show their passport, which was a really disappointing response. There may be further engagement that Mr. Holder would like to mention but there has been very little back from the Garda about how it sees this being reformed.