Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

This measure is not extra-territorial in its effect. If airlines want to check people as they arrive into Irish airspace, they are perfectly free to do so. If they want to organise their airlines on the basis that they only check documentation as an aeroplane lands in Dublin, they are perfectly free to do so. The reality, however, is that no airline will conduct its business in this manner, as it is better to check documents at the point of embarkation. I reiterate that the great majority of flights into Ireland come from countries that have signed up to the Dublin Convention, or safe countries such as the United States and Canada. The great majority of people who travel into Ireland by air or on scheduled sea passenger services emanate from safe jurisdictions. People who come to Ireland from third countries are, by and large, people who have entered the intermediate territories with documentation of some kind. If people come to Dublin without documents, it is because, in the vast majority of cases, they have disposed of their documents as they boarded a flight in Amsterdam or wherever. It is impossible to pass through the access points into Ireland without documents – one cannot board, or disembark from, a flight from Lagos to London without a document. If one arrives in Dublin without documents having travelled from Lagos via London, I am sure that one will not have boarded an aeroplane in Lagos undocumented, even if one is escaping persecution.

Let us live in the real world. This measure depends on making it practicable and workable. It is not egregious or wholly different in principle from the measures that the other member states of the European Union have undertaken in accordance with their Schengen obligations. The amendment before us which provides that anyone could circumvent any of these obligations by merely making a claim at a check-in desk anywhere in the world of intention to make a claim for refugee status in Ireland.