The Taoiseach has confirmed Ireland will follow Britain in establishing electronic border controls in the near future and this will ultimately involve Irish citizens having to carry a passport when travelling to Britain by air or sea.
"When the British e-border system is fully developed, all air and sea passengers will require a valid passport to facilitate a journey," Mr Ahern told the Dáil yesterday.
The Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, maintained later that the common travel area between Ireland and Britain would not be affected by the introduction of the new system. What was involved was the monitoring of movement within the common area and no government decision had been made about the Irish response to that development.
The Taoiseach told the Dáil that the matter had been discussed by the Cabinet on Tuesday as the British moves towards e-borders raised very significant issues for this State. He added that it would be the subject of a memorandum to Government next year.
"After September 11th, 2001, some of the major advantages of the common travel area were lost, as passports or photo identification became a requirement in most locations.
"The potential impact of the electronic border control on the travel of Irish citizens was discussed by the Government yesterday. We are considering a proposed Irish border information system," he said.
"All the British authorities are examining is increased co-operation in cross-Border operations with a focus on targeting illegal immigration across the Border.
"They have done preliminary work over the past 18 months which shows how the Border is being abused. More than 90 per cent of illegal immigration comes not through our airports or ports but across the Border," he said.
Mr Ahern added that the new British system would operate by electronically collecting and analysing passenger information in advance of travel.
"The information available from the machine-readable zone of a passport will be passed to the Border & Immigration Agency's centre for matching various immigration, police and other watch lists... It is a good system, the benefit of which is that the movements of people who are on watch lists, as they are called, will be available."
He said that for most Irish and British citizens, the most significant benefit of the common travel area over the years had been the ability to travel within the area without an identity document.
"However, in view of the changed nature of security operations in the wake of the events of September 11th, 2001, air carriers now require Irish and British citizens to produce satisfactory identification. It does not have to be a passport but, increasingly, it is a passport."
In a letter in today's Irish Times, British Conservative MP Robert Walter claims the common travel area has been "dead" for ten years because of the policy already in place at Dublin and Cork airports of checking the passports of people arriving from Britain.
Mr Walter said he had protested about this "only to be told it is now Irish Government policy to check the identity of everyone arriving at those airports on an 'international' flight".
Meanwhile independent Unionist MEP Jim Allister said he has written to the British home secretary seeking clarification on the intended measure. He said he feared British citizens in Northern Ireland would be denied their free movement within the United Kingdom and this would be "utterly incompatible" and "prejudicial to our British citizenship".
