Bitish and Dublin ministers are due to meet in London amid an escalating row over migrants travelling acoss the bode to the Republic.
Tánaiste and foreign affairs minister Micheál Martin is to co-chair a meeting of the British Irish Inter-Governmental Conference in London on Monday with Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris.
British home secretary James Cleverly and the Republic’s justice minister Helen McEntee had been due to meet on Monday to discuss “strengthening” the Common Travel Area, but the meeting was postponed late on Sunday night.
It comes as Channel crossings continue and Home Office figures show more than 7,000 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the journey - reaching a new record high for the first four months of a calendar year.
Ms McEntee has claimed that the number of asylum seekers crossing from the north is now “higher than 80%” due to a shift in migration patterns in recent months.
British prime minister Rishi Sunak said the increase showed that the UK’s Rwanda plan is working.
The plan aims to send asylum seekers to the east African nation to deter others from crossing the English Channel.
Taoiseach Simon Harris said on Sunday that the Republic won’t “provide a loophole” for other countries’ migration “challenges”.
Mr Harris also said that “close” collaboration and cooperation between the British and Dublin governments was “not just desirable, but absolutely essential”.
“When it comes to migration, I do think it’s important that there is collaboration, where appropriate, between the PSNI and Gardai.”
The British government rejected any bid by the Republic to return asylum seekers unless France agrees to do the same with boats crossing the Channel.
“We won’t accept any asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France,” a British government source said.
First Minister Michelle O’Neill called for a “thought-out” and “considered” response from both the British and Dublin governments.
Dublin ministers are expected to discuss emergency legislation on Tuesday that would see asylum seekers “returned” to the UK.
The legislation is being drafted in response to an Irish High Court ruling that found the Republic designating the UK as a “safe third country” for returning asylum seekers, in the context of the Rwanda plan, is contrary to EU law.
“I will seek government approval for the legislation to be rapidly drafted so that the UK can again be designated as a safe country for returns,” Ms McEntee said in a statement.
“My department has been working on this as a priority since last month’s High Court judgment and I intend that returns to the UK will recommence once the law is enacted.”
Mr Martin said: “I am pleased to be in London for another important meeting of the BIIGC, the first such meeting since the restoration of the Strand I and Strand II institutions.
“As ever, there are numerous areas of mutual interest for the governments to discuss and I look forward to another productive conference.”
Some 500 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK on Friday and Saturday alone, taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 7,167.
This exceeds the previous record high figure of 6,691 for January to April 2022 and has already surpassed the 5,946 arrivals in the first four months of last year.
It means arrivals are 24% higher than this time last year and 7% higher than at this point in 2022.
No crossings were recorded on Sunday.
