Ireland vows to send asylum seekers back to UK

Ireland will “not provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges”, the country’s prime minister said at the weekend as Dublin and Downing Street descended into a nasty migration dispute. Yesterday, Ireland approved new legislation that redesignates the UK as a “safe country” (after the high court in March ruled it wasn’t because of its Rwanda deportation deportation scheme). That allows asylum seekers to be returned. Helen McEntee, the justice minister, said last week that more than 80 per cent of recent arrivals in Ireland – roughly 6,000 people – entered the country via the border with Northern Ireland, an increase in arrivals attributed to the Rwanda policy and fear of deportation. Around 200 homeless refugees are living in tents outside Ireland’s refugee agency in Dublin, but Number 10 says there is not a “legal obligation” to accept them back.