Scotland to Dublin, via Belfast: This is not a visible migrant route. There are no identity checks

Buchanan Street bus station, in the centre of Glasgow, is the size of two football pitches. It is busy. Coaches pull in and out constantly and there is a mill of people in the main hall.

In the middle of all the bustle there is a bronze statue that depicts a young couple embracing. The woman is wearing a tam o’shanter. The man has a suitcase by his side. It encapsulates all the emotion of the moment before departure to a distant place to make a new life, a scene familiar to generations of Scottish, and indeed Irish, people.

Nearby is Bay 57, where about two dozen people are waiting for a bus. At 8am it pulls up. Its destination is Cairnryan, the ferry port for Northern Ireland. For some who arrive at Bay 57 the port, 90km away in western Scotland, will be the departure point for the final leg of another long-distance journey in the hope of starting a new life. In their cases, there origin point has been Africa, or the Middle East, or Central Asia.

Two ferry companies make frequent crossings from Cairnryan to Larne and Belfast. From there travellers can take a bus or train to Dublin, crossing the border near Newry. It’s a long journey that takes the guts of a day, compared to a short flight from Britain into Dublin.

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Last month, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee claimed that 80 per cent of those applying for asylum in Ireland were coming over the Border from the North. They were taking advantage, she argued, of the Common Travel Area between Ireland and Britain where citizens can travel freely between both countries, without having to show documents.

If McEntee is right, some 5,000 people have come across the Border since the new year – more than 320 a week. In comments made while visiting the Middle East last month, Tánaiste Micheál Martin attributed the surge in part to the British government’s plans to transfer migrants to Rwanda to process their applications.

Asylum seekers who arrive in to Ireland on this route are not conspicuous. It’s not a visible migrant route like the Darién Gap, a notorious narrow corridor between Colombia and Panama, where 500,000 people a year pass through as they travel north.

There are up to 12 sailings a day from Scotland, numerous domestic flights from English cities, and frequent bus and train journeys to Belfast and Dublin. If McEntee’s 80 per cent figure is correct, it equates to an average of 45 migrants crossing into the Republic each day. Spread across so many modes of travel, with journeys undertaken individually or in small groups, that movement of people is very difficult to track.

At 10.40am at the ferry terminal, a long snake of cars and trucks waits to board the Stena Superfast VIII. Hundreds of passengers board this way. Asylum seekers are more likely to be foot passengers, carrying luggage. At most there are 35 foot passengers on this sailing.

The sailing to Belfast is uneventful as is the journey to the long-distance bus station under the shadow of the Europa Hotel in the city centre. As people board the Dublin bus, it’s not possible to tell who, if any, will claim asylum after crossing into the State. The bus arrives in Dublin that evening – there have been no identity checks at any point of the journey.

The Scottish Refugee Council says it has seen no evidence of the trend of people travelling through Scotland to get to Ireland. Daniel Holder, director of the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, says the same.

Referring to McEntee’s comments, Holder says: “The figures are not based on the detection of people coming over the land border, but on the number of people making in-country, rather than in-airport, claims.

“It’s a leap. There could be all sorts of other explanations in terms of changing trends,” he adds.

Whatever the accuracy of the figures, it is clear that the route is being used. Based on conversations with about 50 asylum seekers in Dublin over two days, most of them recently arrived, it was clear that significant numbers came from the UK.

Late on Tuesday night, near the Light House Café in Dublin’s Pearse Street, a drop-in centre for homeless people, three young Nigerian men sit on steps, their suitcases at their sides. All have arrived in the city that day via the ferry.

“We came over on the Superfast,” says one.

None were willing to give their names but they say compatriots have taken the same route. For now, they have been given tents by the Light House but do not know where to go.

“Do you know of any parks around here?” one asks.

Earlier that day, long rows of pop-up tents, covered in blue tarpaulin, lined both banks of the Grand Canal near Mount Street. Many of the tents were occupied by Palestinian, Syrian, Afghan and Jordanian men, all recently arrived.

Most arrived from the UK but not all came through Northern Ireland, with some saying they came directly to Dublin by ferry from Liverpool or Holyhead. A Nigerian man said he had paid people-smugglers and was put on a flight to Belfast, while two other men said they flew in to Dublin Airport.

Khyber is a 28-year-old Afghan who arrived in Dublin on Monday. He came into Dublin on a ferry from Holyhead, having spent “a few weeks” in London, and a long period before that in the French port town of Calais.

He did not like England. “The UK really treats asylum seekers with something that is against all human rights, especially its Rwanda policy,” he says. “It’s a kind of psychological torture.”

He has travelled with his friend Abdul Rashid (28), a law student, who hopes to get status in Ireland that will allow him to go back to university. Both left Afghanistan soon after the Taliban came to power in 2021.

Over two days, The Irish Times meets men from Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Algeria, Swaziland, Jordan, Pakistan, Vietnam and even one from South Korea.

Most who arrive in Dublin have, against the odds, made determined journeys from home countries riven by conflict, climate change or poverty.

On Tuesday night, the Light House was inundated, with more than 400 people seeking assistance. It ran out of tents and sleeping bags.

Many of the men using the service say they have been on the move across continents for three years or more.

Abdul Rashid lists the countries he has been through since 2021. “I have gone through Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, Switzerland, France and then the UK,” he says.

His friend Khyber has had a rootless, stateless, peripatetic existence since he escaped to Iran and then Turkey in 2001.

“I crossed borders just by myself. There were a lot of dangers even at night. I had to go through forests and mountains into Bulgaria. There were times I did not have enough money. I was attacked. I was exposed to storms. There were times I lost my hope, did not know if I would be alive or not,” he says.

The accounts of others differ in detail but are the same in essence: hundreds of people setting out on long, complicated journeys, with little other than a few possessions and hope of a better life.

Aubrey McCarthy, founder of Tiglin homeless services and the Light House Cafe, notes how vulnerable these people are.

“They have no accommodation, their English is poor. They’re here for protection and they haven’t a clue what is happening. They’re being given a sheet, told there is no accommodation, given a card, and then sent to us to get a tent,” he says. “What we have tried to do is add a bit of dignity.”

Within Government, there is concern that the change of public sentiment puts pressures on politicians to support hardline policies rather than keeping a centrist course.

“People forget that 450 women and children come in each week and we have found accommodation for them all,” says one senior source with knowledge of Government thinking.

“We will end up with Brexit and Rwanda-type policies if we don’t handle it humanely. These are people applying for international protection. We are obliged under law to respect that.”

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