Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator Higgins is being reasonable about this amendment, therefore I do not think I need to say too much about it. However, our immigration controls must be practical and workable. They cannot be an obstacle course of impenetrable presumptions against the proper conduct of immigration control. Therefore, it seems to me that were we to accept the amendment in its present form, it would effectively cast on the authorities an almost unbearable burden of proof in circumstances that would render the whole idea impractical. If someone is under the age of 18, they have ample opportunity to make that point and they will be treated accordingly. When a person has brought no documentation with him or her to Ireland from a great distance away and from a country which that person claims is liable to persecute him or her, and if that person is seeking international protection, it is impossible in those circumstances for the Irish authorities to be cast with the burden of finding documentation which establishes as a positive fact the date of birth of someone who is 21 but who could be 18 or 24. That is an onus which cannot be discharged. We must all face up to the fact that post Brexit, the common travel area is a matter of huge importance to this country, both North-South and east-west. Our arrangements in this country are going to have to be such as are compatible with and not subversive of the UK's right to control immigration as well. It is not spoken about much but there is going to have to be a degree of dovetailing of our approach to migration into Ireland, which takes account of the fact that we could become a back door to Great Britain and Northern Ireland.It is all very well to put forward proposals which seem to be protective of vulnerable people but one can push that too far to the point where it makes the law and the systems for making the law work inoperable and effectively opens an unclosable back door to migration to the United Kingdom. That would inevitably cause friction between Ireland and Britain. We cannot always assume that any safeguard is a limitation on rights. The rights of the Irish people to a common travel area, and the joint interest in Britain between it and all the people in the North and South of Ireland in maintaining that common travel area, require that the Irish Government takes on board the real threats to the subversion of British immigration law.