Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Everyone who boards a ferry will be checked by the ferry company. At present it has not an obligation to check the documentation of its passengers. We are now bringing in a rule that obliges them to check and they will pay a fine for every undocumented passenger they carry. From now on every ferry company and airline travelling into Ireland from outside of the United Kingdom will have to put in place checks to ensure all its passengers are documented. That is a rule we are introducing and they will be liable if they fail to live up to their new duty. Someone who boards a ferry undocumented is someone who will have evaded.

I accept Senator Ryan's point that currently there is some casualness about this and not everyone is counted in every car. From now on that degree of casualness will disappear. Everyone will have to carry appropriate papers to board a ferry or plane from outside the UK and coming to Ireland. It will be unusual for anyone boarding a ferry to be unchecked from now on.

It could clearly apply to people who are concealed in a vehicle. Unless ferry staff search every vehicle, it is possible to conceal people in one. If people are travelling like this and the owner has failed in his or her duty to check whether they are entitled to enter Ireland, it would make no sense to distinguish between the driver of a car towing a caravan with five people under the bed and the driver of a truck who made no effort to ensure that his container doors were locked while travelling between Cherbourg and Rosslare. We are dealing with reality here.

I ask the Senators to withdraw the amendment because it asks me, even if it were redrafted in a neater way, to make a distinction I ought not to make and which has no practical use.