'Concerns' over Gardaí and PSNI maintaining co-operation post-Brexit

The Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union said it had “particular concerns” about maintaining co-operation once the UK formally withdraws from EU arrangements on New Year’s Day.

Britain needs to draw up bilateral policing agreements with Ireland to ensure law enforcement agencies in the North can continue the current high-level of co-operation from January 1, a British all-party parliamentary committee has said.

The Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union said it had “particular concerns” about maintaining co-operation once the UK formally withdraws from EU arrangements on New Year’s Day.

It said PSNI bosses had told the committee:

• They want joint investigations teams with Gardaí to replace the existing arrangements under Europol, the EU police agency;
• A major concern of theirs was the ability to continue exchanging data with Gardaí if the European Commission was not able to issue the UK with a ‘data adequacy agreement’;
• They believe the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK could provide a “soft underbelly” for criminals smuggling drugs, firearms, people and contraband;
• That an EU-UK Surrender Agreement was needed to replace to current efficient European Arrest Warrant system

“The UK must explore all possibilities available, including the possibility of bilateral arrangements, in order that law enforcement agencies in Northern Ireland and Ireland can continue to cooperate in this way on 1 January 2021.” 

The report said: “There are particular concerns about maintaining good law enforcement co-operation between the UK and Ireland. Simon Byrne, Chief Constable, PSNI, said that, while criminals exploiting the border is not new, he feared that the Common Travel Area (CTA) could provide a ‘soft underbelly’ for people wishing to exploit it for smuggling drugs, firearms, people, contraband, or ‘to exploit tariffs [ … ] depending on where that ends up’.” 

The report said that “a major concern” was the ability to continue to exchange data cross border. 

PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne.

It said Simon Byrne described data access without a data adequacy decision as: “a difficult situation where we do not get full access to the current tools and intelligence flows, I have described it as imagining a world where you are going from Wi-Fi to a modem; in other words, you will still have connectivity but it will take a lot longer.” It said that regarding cooperation with Gardaí, the chief constable “hoped something like the Joint Investigation Team, which is a Europol initiative, could be negotiated between two countries”.

It said Assistant Chief Constable Mark McEwan, Lead for EU Exit, PSNI, told the committee: “We have a long-established relationship with An Garda Siochána and that operates at a number of levels” including very close local arrangements allow for day-to-day cooperation. 

He said this allowed the PSNI “to build relationships and develop faster-flowing information and intelligence flows with our colleagues in the Garda.” 

Assistant Chief Constable McEwan said this was particularly important in the border area, where there are communities “living their daily lives on both sides of the border” and that it was important to support those communities: “We need to do everything we can to support them and to ensure we are able to maintain the likes of that information-sharing around missing persons and other community safety things that impact on people’s lives, as well as the organised crime aspects.” 

When asked about the sharing information with counterparts in Ireland if there is no data adequacy decision in place by 1 January, Robin Walker, Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, told the committee: “The first point is that we want to get a data adequacy agreement working in both directions that will allow that in the most effective way. If you were to envisage a scenario where that was not possible, we would then have to look at what we might be able do on a bilateral level to facilitate arrangements to have conversations under the information sharing that takes place under the CTA Forum, etc.” The report said another concern was to fill the space left by Britain’s exit from the European Arrest Warrant.

“If there is no substitute in place and the relationship reverts back to that under the 1957 Council of Europe Convention on extradition which will lengthen the time it takes to extradite people, and where extradition was a political decision rather than a judicial one as it is under the EAW,” it said.