The Irish government has got itself into a right panic-stricken pickle about migration. It’s difficult to see how they can extricate themselves.
Perhaps if Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin had spent more time considering the implications of the Rwanda Act for the Good Friday Agreement, instead of his futile tick-tacking around the Middle East, there might have been a different outcome.
Earlier this year, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) and the Equality Commission (ECNI) both expressed concern at the Rwanda Act applying to the north because migration policy is not devolved.
Applying it here is problematical because the act contravenes the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol/Windsor Framework, since those documents guarantee the Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions, notably “incorporation into NI law of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with direct access to the courts and remedies for breach of the convention”.
In February Ivana Bacik asked Martin in the Dáil if the Rwanda bill was “compatible with the GFA’s guarantees on rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity”, which it isn’t. Martin acknowledged the concerns of NIHRC and ECNI but gave no response on the Irish government’s position.
Furthermore, Martin ignored Bacik’s request for a report on Irish government representation to the British because there wasn’t any. Equally, of course, the British never consulted Dublin about the bill.
All this is important because in the Rwanda Act, Rishi Sunak is openly defying the ECHR and heading for a showdown with the court. He has instructed civil servants to disregard attempts by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to implement emergency injunctions to prevent ‘imminent risk of irreparable harm’ to an individual, as for example being deported to an unsafe country like Rwanda. Clearly this instruction is not compatible with the guarantees in the GFA, nor indeed is much else in the act.
Yet not a word on this matter from Dublin, as the act ping-ponged about parliament for months and all these points were debated. Mind you, if Sunak had excluded the north from the act, this place could have become, as Sammy Wilson predicted in one debate, “a magnet for asylum seekers”.
Now, because the rights and guarantees of the GFA are denied in the north, Dublin has become a magnet. Why didn’t Martin or anyone else in Dublin see it coming during the endless arguments in Westminster? Did they deliberately avoid a clash with Britain at the expense of the GFA?
Ultimately it will be settled in the courts, or if and when a Labour government is elected, since they’ve promised to repeal it forthwith – but that doesn’t solve Dublin’s immediate crisis. In the meantime panicky emergency legislation to override the Dublin High Court’s ruling against returning migrants to the UK because, guess what, the Rwanda Act breaches the ECHR, won’t have the slightest effect. The British won’t take them back.
As our proconsul correctly told Martin on Monday, Brussels has always told the UK to treat the EU as an entity of which the Republic is part. It’s laughable invoking a so-called agreement with the British from 2020, which incidentally Dublin refuses to publish because that would reveal it’s only a memorandum and has no legal standing. Anyway, this British government honouring an agreement? You’re kidding: agreement, shmeement.
Dealing with this imbroglio is made urgent by imminent elections in both the UK and the Republic. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee blabbing out the numbers from the north with no thought of repercussions has left Simon Harris blathering.
The pair have presented Sunak with the chance to claim his Rwanda policy is working as a deterrent without any planes taking off for Africa. As for Harris, whose task is to revive Fine Gael hopes, he has precious little time to resolve the migrant crisis but no idea how to do it.
The Irish government have presented Rishi Sunak with the chance to claim his Rwanda policy is working as a deterrent without any planes taking off for Africa. As for Simon Harris, whose task is to revive Fine Gael hopes, he has precious little time to resolve the migrant crisis but no idea how to do it
European and council elections loom in June. No wonder he cleared the asylum-seeker encampment in Dublin on Wednesday. At least he gave the appearance of doing something, but it’s just an attempt to hide the problem.
Still, we’re lucky to have the Irish government as joint guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement aren’t we? They placed it front and centre this year, eh?