Former Conservative minister Sir Ranil Jayawardena has said the Irish authorities should have picked up that the suspect in the Belfast attack had flown in from a safe country.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “Let’s deal with the point that we do know for sure first, which is around the Schengen Agreement and the fact that Ireland’s not in it.
“There should have been proper checks to make sure that whoever was coming into Ireland from Paris, whoever was coming into Ireland was legitimately allowed to be first of all in the European Union, of which Ireland is part, but second in Ireland, as a result.
“And on that basis that person should have been properly checked by authorities, as the British authorities would do, people flying here, and that’s part of why advanced travel information has to be obtained for people flying into the UK.
“I’d fully expect the Irish authorities would do the same. So, if this person was flagged, then the Irish authorities should pick that up.
“There’s a second point around this, which is that this person was traveling supposedly, if we believe that he had documentation that was legitimate and he was flying from Sudan to France, from France to Ireland. He was flying through safe countries with documentation.
“So if he believed that he was in fear of his life in Sudan, he arrived in France safely. He arrived in Ireland, a country that speaks English, which is often the argument for why people come to the United Kingdom. He arrived in Ireland safely, and he didn’t claim asylum there.
“And so I think there’s got to be questions asked as to why someone was allowed to claim asylum in the United Kingdom when they had traveled already through Ireland, which is part of the common travel area with the UK.
“So that’s another point that I think needs to be looked at carefully.
“I don’t think the Windsor Framework is the problem here. I genuinely don’t. I do accept that for Northern Ireland there have been issues in relation to Brexit, for sure.
“But here’s the point, and this is a really important point: we wasted three years under Theresa May not getting anywhere on Brexit, handed over most of our cards, and Boris had to sort it out, so that was the deal we got.”
