Common Travel Area

And there's extensive travel between Ireland and Great Britain itself by ferry and air.

And because of the common travel area, British and Irish citizens have long enjoyed exceptionally free movement between the two countries.

But that arrangement matters because, you see, it predates our membership of the EU and reflects the unique relationship between Britain and Ireland.

So it goes back before we even joined the EU, but it obviously presents a very obvious immigration enforcement problem.

And nobody should pretend that British and Irish citizens traveling legitimately are the problem.

So reform has to answer a really tough question.

How do you distinguish legitimate common travel area movement from somebody exploiting the system to enter the UK illegally? And this is where intelligence, data sharing, enforcement at ports and airports and cooperation between the British and Irish governments become crucial.

And there's another political dimension to this.

And the figures that you cite are figures that the government produced, but they don't actually produce any evidence to back that up.

But I accept that probably a majority of people in the international protection system come via the common travel area.

We don't have a bilateral returns agreement with Britain, which we absolutely should have and which should be prioritised by government.

And the reason we don't have that is because government have actually invested all of their energies into signing up and then implementing the EU asylum and migration pact, something that takes no account whatsoever of the fact that we have a common travel area and a partitioned island, something that actually has undermined our own sovereignty and our own ability to make migration laws.

And so, yes, if that's an issue, well, then the first instance we need the Irish government to be prioritising having bilateral arrangement with Britain.

So it's not about blaming the Brits or blaming anybody else.

Because I know there's an awful lot of people do not want that.

We're in, we're in the Common Travel Area, and, uh, we... do we want to retain that? I did ask the question, uh, of the then Treasury Minister.

I said to him, "Do we need to review the Common Travel Area if it, if it's becoming a risk because of the likes of Dublin or, or something like that?" Um, it, it was like, "Well, we've never thought of that.

We've never done that." You know, there's a lot that we do need to be reviewing.

We-- A government's role is to protect its people, and part of that will be the borders.

Should they be knocked off the list?

We have the Common Travel Area.

Irish people can, can avail of housing in England as well.

Yes, they can.