Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I want to pursue a little further the ending of the common travel area and the proposed requirement from 2009 onwards to produce a passport when entering Britain. As I understand it, if I take a ferry from my constituency in Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead, I will have to produce a passport in Holyhead, but if I drive up to Larne and take a ferry from there to Stranraer, I will not have to produce a passport. A person travelling from Dublin to Belfast for a flight to Heathrow will not, under the new service, have to produce a passport, but conversely a person with a British passport travelling from Northern Ireland to Dublin and on to a UK destination will have to produce a British passport to travel in what he or she considers his or her own country.

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