Assumed ‘special status’ for Irish citizens not guaranteed when Britain leaves the EU, says expert.
The rights of Irish citizens to emigrate to Britain will need to be enshrined in law if their assumed “special status” is to continue, according to legal experts.
The Irish have more rights than other EU citizens in Britain because of the historical ties between the two countries, such as the right to vote and the right to stand for public office, including Westminster.
It has been widely assumed that this comes from the special historical links between the two countries and specifically the 1949 Ireland Act, which officially ended the country’s status as a British dominion.
But Bernard Ryan, professor of migration law at Leicester University, said this was a vague statement and if it were challenged might not have much legal value. “There is some sort of political consensus and the Ireland Act has some sort of legal aspiration, but I would not say it in itself protects the rights of the Irish,” he said.
The act was designed to treat the Irish the same as Commonwealth citizens, who in 1949 had the right to emigrate to Britain.
Irish and Commonwealth citizens were both subsequently subjected to immigration controls. In the case of Irish citizens, the controls never amounted to anything in practice as they were cancelled out by an exemption that came into force on the same day as the the immigration (control of entry through Republic of Ireland) order 1972.
This exemption, under common travel area legislation, means that to this day there is no legal requirement to show a passport when crossing the British/Irish borders, although there are rights to deport undesirables.
Ryan is one of the few lawyers examining the unique position of Irish citizens in detail. He has been cited in a post-Brexit House of Commons briefing paper on the “special status of Irish nationals in UK law”.
He said: “The minimum needed would be some sort of political statement on immigration and future rights of Irish citizens. But I feel in reality something has to be written into immigration legislation going forward.”
The right to vote is probably the least contentious issue as it is provided for in the Representation of the People’s Act 1983 and was reciprocated by Ireland in 1984.
The chances of EU citizens settled in Britain retaining all their rights to live, work and retire in the UK after Brexit have been rated at zero by legal experts.
A leading barrister who specialises in international public law told a House of Lords panel in September that it was inconceivable that the laws would survive entirely intact.
Prof Alan Vaughan Lowe QC said this was the price millions of people – including 1.3 million Britons abroad and 3 million non-Britons living in the UK – were likely to pay for Brexit.
Such was the uncertainty surrounding negotiations and the demands of other EU states, he said, that the British government might have to consider compensation for British citizens abroad if some rights, such as access to Spanish or French healthcare, were lost.
But Lowe told the Lords’ justice subcommittee that what worried him most was the lack of knowledge about the issue at government level. “There is very little evidence of people knowing what they are trying to do,” he said.
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