Tánaiste Micheál Martin holds press conference in London alongside Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, as tensions rise over migrant returns
Tánaiste Micheál Martin holds press conference in London alongside Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, as tensions rise over migrant returnsSecretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris and Tánaiste Micheál Martin following a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
Standing directly beside the Tánaiste, Mr Heaton-Harris denied that the UK government’s insistence that it would not accept the return of asylum seekers from the Republic constituted a unilateral threat not to implement the agreement to which Mr Martin had referred just minutes previously.
Mr Martin said the wider issue of migration, including returns, was covered by an unspecified agreement between the British and Irish governments that was reached in the “years after Brexit”. He made at least five references to it during the BIIGC press conference. The Tánaiste denied there was a “snub” by the Government to the British in the decision of Ms McEntee not to attend the BIIGC. The Department of Justice said she had stayed behind in Dublin to meet her officials, even though several of her senior departmental staff had travelled to London for the BIIGC.
Mr Heaton-Harris said there was “no way” the UK government “would want to upset the relationship” with the Republic. But he insisted that the UK’s priority was to get its Rwanda deportation regime up and running to act as a deterrent to migrants arriving on British shores in small boats, a key political promise of the Tory government.
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