For more than five years, Carl has been driving his 60-seater coach from Dublin to Belfast. It’s a two-hour journey straight up the M1 and across the border – and Carl knows his customers. At least, he thought he did.
There are the commuters he sees most days, the ‘once-a-weekers’ who travel home on Friday nights, and then the countless tourists armed with maps, cameras and worried looks.
But then one morning last summer, Carl saw something that made him realise his job had changed entirely.
For as he loaded the first tranche of suitcases into the undercarriage, he spotted a man standing beside his bus holding an enormous wad of cash in his right hand.
Dressed in jeans and a dark puffer jacket, the man – who didn’t appear to be local – was repeatedly looking over his shoulder, almost as though he knew what he was doing would attract unwanted attention.
‘At first I was unsure what he was doing,’ Carl – not his real name – confessed to the Daily Mail this week outside Dublin’s central bus station. ‘But then I saw he was handing €20 bills to a line of men – none of whom spoke English – and who were each using the money to buy a ticket and climb aboard my coach.’
It was only when he saw this seemingly altruistic moneyman a second time that Carl realised he was not only driving commuters and tourists over the border into the UK, but dozens of asylum seekers.
Asylum seekers waiting to be processed in Dublin. The absence of a physical border with Northern Ireland makes for a soft route back to the UK
One theory as to why this man was paying the passage of young migrants is that the men could have been victims of either human trafficking or people smuggling and set for work in Northern Ireland’s black market, perhaps as delivery drivers, manual labourers or even drug runners.
‘I voted for Brexit,’ Carl continued, ‘and I’ve always said I’m British, not Irish. But in Northern Ireland, we didn’t get Brexit: we have an open border with Europe for the flow of undocumented people. It’s as simple as that.
‘For the first time in my life, we’ve got Nationalists and Loyalists uniting in the face of a common enemy. I tell you, boy, there’s trouble brewing.’
Known as the Common Travel Area (CTA), the border agreement between Ireland and the UK allows British and Irish citizens to move freely, unimpeded and with limited checks between the two countries.
Although the same privileges are not extended to foreign nationals, the absence of a physical border between Ireland and Northern Ireland has left law enforcement on its knees, with asylum seekers crossing to Britain with ease. No doubt, an air-conditioned bus through the Emerald Isle’s rolling hills beats a leaky dinghy across the Channel.
But what’s all the more astonishing is that – as the Daily Mail discovered this week – the ‘twenty or so’ young migrant men crossing from Dublin to Belfast each week are typically not recent arrivals to Ireland, but rather migrants who came to Britain through various means, including by small boat or plane, but fled after the announcement of the Rwanda scheme, only to now be heading back to the UK after Labour scrapped the policy.
This is the story of how the ‘invisible border’ in Ireland – once a major sticking point in Brexit negotiations – became a free pass into the UK.
Earlier this week, I boarded one of the more than 50 coaches that leave Dublin for Belfast every day, taking the 100-mile journey north for just €20 (about £17).
‘Earlier this week, I boarded one of the more than 50 coaches that leave Dublin for Belfast every day, taking the 100-mile journey north for just €20 (about £17)’
Clambering up the steps, a young Croatian couple produced their passports for the driver’s approval, only for him to wave them away with a nonchalant: ‘You don’t need those!’
‘We assumed that, as we are from Europe and we are entering the UK now, we would show our passports,’ the couple in their 30s told me once on board. ‘But the driver just said no.’
Eighty minutes later, we pass without fanfare or any checks into Northern Ireland. Half an hour after that, we arrive in Belfast where passengers disembark, again without checks or customs, and disperse into the city.
‘I wouldn’t know who was carrying a passport and who wasn’t,’ confessed the driver, who again didn’t wish to be named for fear of professional repercussions.
‘The bottom line is, you’re supposed to be British or Irish, but we have no border and so you can imagine what might happen.
‘In the past year, my bus has been stopped once by the PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland], and that was in the middle of the night when no one was on board anyway.’
Reports of buses being stopped for immigration checks are exceedingly rare, with drivers reporting anything from zero to four times in the past year. Checks by the Gardai (the police in the Republic of Ireland) are more common, and part of a broader crackdown on immigration from Britain to the EU.
But to really understand the issue of the asylum crisis along the Irish border, and the significance of what is occurring now, we have to go back to early 2024 when the Westminster Parliament approved then ex-PM Boris Johnson’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
This long-mooted policy, lauded by those on the Right though continually held up in the courts, seemed finally close to fruition just before the 2024 General Election, prompting many asylum seekers to flee Britain for Ireland in order to avoid the threat of deportation.
At the time, deputy Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin confirmed those coming from Northern Ireland to the Republic were ‘fearful’ of remaining in Britain and that they sought ‘sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda’.
In April that year, weeks after Westminster ratified the Rwanda plan, then Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee revealed that 80 per cent of immigrants coming into Ireland were entering from Britain via the open land border.
This figure was an estimate based on the fact the number of asylum claims registered at air and sea ports had fallen, while the number registered at the International Protection Office in Dublin City Centre, near the bus station, was rising sharply.
The last remaining tents on Mount Street, in the heart of Dublin, where migrants unsure if they want to go north
The situation was made more complicated by an Irish High Court ruling which deemed Britain not to be a ‘safe’ country for migrant returns due to the threat of deportation to Rwanda. This meant the Irish government was unable to send migrants back over the border, a decision even the UK Home Office branded ‘absolutely absurd’.
In 2024 alone, more than 18,500 people claimed asylum in Ireland, an all-time high. No wonder then that one officer responsible for processing migrants in Dublin described the situation that year as a ‘madhouse’. ‘We’ve nowhere to put them all,’ he continued, ‘and more keep coming. There’s no end to it.’
A large refugee camp composed of tents and makeshift shelters duly sprung up on Mount Street in the heart of Dublin, near the asylum office, with more than 1,500 asylum seekers sleeping rough.
Perhaps inevitably, the large influx of migrants sparked a backlash across the Republic.
In June last year, a number of migrant tents lining the city’s Grand Canal were slashed with blades while the migrants’ belongings were reportedly stolen and their shelters cast off into the water.
The same month saw more than 3,000 people take to the streets of Cork in an anti-immigration rally organised by the protest group Ireland Says No where chants varied from ‘Ireland for the Irish’ to ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets’.
And then in October last year, events took a further sinister turn with mass rioting across the capital city prompted by the alleged sexual assault of a ten-year-old girl by a 26-year-old man outside the Citywest Hotel, which was being used to house asylum seekers.
There was widespread anti-social behaviour and police vehicles were set ablaze in scenes rarely seen on the island since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought relative calm to a fractured country long beset by sectarian violence.
However, just a few months on from those ugly events, and the picture is very different. For the asylum seekers that flooded south into the Republic have turned around and are now fleeing in the opposite direction back to the UK.
There are two main reasons why this is happening.
First of all, shortly after taking office in July 2024, Keir Starmer announced that the Rwanda Plan was ‘dead and buried’, removing the only substantive deterrent to migrants seeking asylum in Britain.
Second, and vitally, late last year incumbent Irish Justice Secretary Jim O’Callaghan introduced a raft of aggressive new measures making it more difficult for asylum seekers to settle in the Republic.
The new laws include the ‘pay‑to-stay’ initiative – a mandatory contribution of up to €238 (£208) a week for those staying in government-provided accommodation. As of July last year, there were 32,774 applicants living in government accommodation, including hotels.
The waiting period for naturalisation has also increased from three to five years while the income threshold for family reunification has increased to €44,000 (£38,2600) for sponsors.
No wonder then that many migrants now see Britain as a better option not only for their safety, but for their bank balance too.
The Justice Department told the Daily Mail: ‘Minister O’Callaghan is committed to taking measures directed at curtailing abuse of the Common Travel Area; this includes further operational measures for law enforcement and border management.’
Fred completes his journey from Dublin to Belfast without hindrance
Earlier this week, I returned to the migrant tent encampment on Mount Street in Dublin to speak with the migrants – barely more than ten – still living beside the canal. The scene was shocking, with rubbish strewn across the old towpath and at least five tents dumped in the water.
Shortly after midday, two young men were smoking a joint beneath a tree, another brushed his teeth crouched on his haunches beside the canal while a third poked his head out of his tent fearing, so he claimed, we were there to intimidate him. ‘Most of the people here have gone,’ said the young man peering from behind the canvas, when he realised we meant him no harm. ‘Many have gone to Belfast, then they say its easy to get to England. So maybe I’ll go too.’
No doubt a large number of those who have recently crossed back into the UK were motivated to do so by a growing number of TikTok migrant influencers explaining the ease with which one can make the crossing.
One such personality, who goes by the name Updiweli Caatto and boasts 250,000 followers, has documented his own journey from his native Libya to Ireland.
In one video, the young man can be seen standing beside a bus telling his followers: ‘You see, this bus is the one people take from Ireland,’ before continuing on to explain that it is the safest and cheapest route into the UK from the EU. And having taken the journey myself for just €20, it’s hard to disagree.
However, there may well be another unsavoury chapter to come in this upsetting tale of insiders and outsiders. For upon entry to Belfast, migrants are unlikely to find themselves particularly welcomed by a Northern Irish populace increasingly tormented by their own migration woes.
Late last year, a group calling itself East Belfast Nightwatch First Division began ominously patrolling the city streets confronting migrants – or anyone they perceived to be a threat.
A spokesperson for the Green Party accused the group of ‘feeding into the recent tensions across this island’ while the PSNI urged citizens against taking the law into their own hands.
Unfortunately, as governments across Europe have discovered to their detriment over the past decade, if the authorities cannot protect communities against the threat of mass migration, then some people will attempt to do it for them.
How long then before the tide turns again, and thousands of desperate young men find themselves hounded out, forced to look elsewhere yet again, and book a €20 bus back to Dublin?
