The Government is moving closer to placing restrictions on people from Bulgaria and Romania coming to the Republic to work when both states join the EU on January 1st next year.
Tánaiste Michael McDowell signalled yesterday that Ireland would most likely introduce restrictions to protect its society and economy. Introducing restrictions would also prevent problems emerging with the common travel area between Britain and Ireland, he said.
"All the signals are that Ireland will not take a more liberal path to the UK because the consequences for the common travel area could be chaotic," Mr McDowell said when asked about indications that Britain would impose restrictions on workers from the new EU members.
Mr McDowell also said that Ireland had its own social and economic interests to look after in relation to the decision on whether to impose work permit restrictions or to open the labour market fully, as it did in May 2004 at the last EU enlargement.
"More than a quarter of a million personal public service (PPS) numbers have been taken up by people from the new member-states and that is in a state of just four million people . . . there are issues to be looked at," Mr McDowell told a meeting of EU justice ministers in Finland. Earlier this week, British home secretary John Reid indicated that Britain would impose restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria.
"We need to manage immigration carefully, including in respect of the forthcoming decisions over Romania and Bulgaria," Mr Reid told the Police Superintendents' Association annual conference on Tuesday.
Britain is understood to be considering introducing quotas on work permits or a time limit before workers from the two countries can travel to work in the UK.
Ireland, Britain and Sweden were the only three of the 15 old member-states to fully open their labour markets to citizens from the 10 new member-states in May 2004.
Since enlargement, many more people than expected have moved to Ireland and Britain. According to the latest Government statistics, some 260,000 workers have applied for PPS numbers in the Republic, while some 600,000 people have taken up jobs in Britain. Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians are the most common foreign nationals to travel in search of work.
Next Tuesday the European Commission is expected to recommend that both Romania and Bulgaria join the EU on January 1st, 2007. Only Finland has so far said that it will fully open its labour market to workers from both countries.