ID to be issued for Irish travelling to Britain

IRISH people will be issued with some form of identity document they can use when travelling to Britain as part of a move to maintain the common travel area, Justice Minister Brian Lenihan has said.

Details have still to be worked out as to what form the document will take, but it will have to be brought in to coincide with the introduction of e-borders (pre- travel checks on passengers) by Britain next year.

The British government intends to issue biometric ID cards from 2010 to its citizens and to Irish and other foreigners living in Britain. Each card will have up to 49 pieces of information including iris patterns and fingerprints.

It is unclear whether Britain would demand that Irish citizens and those travelling from Northern Ireland would be required to show a similar level of identity.

But to ensure border checks are not reinstated between Northern Ireland and the Republic, people travelling into the six counties and to Britain will need to carry some form of identification for security purposes.

The Irish Government has said it does not intend to introduce identification cards for citizens, but Mr Lenihan acknowledged that some form of ID would have to be devised for those travelling to the North and Britain.

“The whole thing is not yet worked out but an arrangement will have to be made and we will have to generate some class of document which our citizens going to Britain will have,” he said.

Earlier this month British Prime Minister Gordon Brown informed Ian Paisley that British citizens travelling from the North to Britain would not be subject to passport controls because of new electronic borders.

He said: “There are no plans to require domestic passengers to produce passports on any domestic air or sea journey, including on routes from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom.”

This letter to Mr Paisley did not say what form of identification would be needed for passengers from the North.

However, it said: “There is no question of introducing fixed immigration controls on either side of the land border” between the Republic and the North.

Britain is introducing its own e-borders database to keep track of all those entering and leaving the country, by keeping track of all passenger bookings on ferries, train and flights across the channel.

Ireland has said it will join in this system so that visa, entry and exit data on everyone coming into and leaving both countries will be available to police in both jurisdictions.

Neither country is part of the Schengen free travel area, which comprises all other EU member states except Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta.

Schengen countries are to make their databases available to one another’s security and customs services.

Ireland and Britain asked to be included but were refused by the EU and are fighting the decision in the European Court of Justice.