Chris McNulty, 26 Dec
There are calls for a review of the Common Travel Area (CTA) after the
case was raised of a Derry-based Filipino priest was unable to go on a
bus trip to Donegal.
Stephen Kelly, the Derry-based Chief Executive of Manufacturing NI,
raised the matter to the Dáil’s Good Friday Implementation Committee.
“Is it time to review the Common Travel Area that is reflective of the
island of Ireland as it is today and indeed these two islands as we
find them today?” he said.
“It seems ridiculous to me. There is a Filipino priest who serves in
the local chapel in Derry.
"They were doing a bus trip into Donegal and the priest could not go. I
wondered what was going on there. It is because of the migration issue
post Brexit. He doesn’t have the rights so he didn’t take the risk.
“The same thing is happening on both sides of the border with school
trips. It is a really important issue for people and individuals and
what is says for us as a welcoming place.”
The CTA is an arrangement between Ireland and the UK that gives a
variety of rights to citizens of those countries.
People who hold visas and have a right to live, work and study in the
north and south of Ireland do not enjoy the rights Irish born citizens
to untrammelled cross-border travel, however.
Mr Kelly pointed out that one large pharmaceutical company has a ‘3D
jigsaw’ in order to ‘see which members staff can go to support work
elsewhere on the island’.
He said: “The Common Travel Area was designed in the 1920s for an
Ireland and a UK that doesn’t exist today.
“We are incredibly diverse countries and we have welcomed people who
have enriched us with their own culture as well as their labour over
the last number of decades. Those people don’t share in the same
benefits as I do, someone who was born here.”