No-nonsense On the "same day" that they are discovered entering the country illegally, Irish officials are sending illegal migrants back to the UK.

In addition to the thousands who have already crossed the English Channel to get to Britain from mainland Europe, the Republic of Ireland's prompt action has resulted in the sending of some 200 individuals to the United Kingdom via ferry across the Irish Sea so far this year.

Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Government, which abandoned the Rwanda deportation plan and recently declared they could look at compensating nations like Vietnam and Turkey to end the migrant crisis, seems to be in sharp contrast to the swift Irish response.

The BBC reports the number of migrants caught entering the Republic from Northern Ireland are thought to be just a small fraction of those who have headed south undetected.

It said more than 2,000 illegal immigrants have been issued with deportation orders so far this year, a massive 156 percent increase on the same period in 2023. Asylum applications have risen by nearly 300 percent compared to five years ago.

Detective Chief Superintendent Aidan Minnock, from the Garda National Immigration Bureau, told the BBC: "If they don't have status to be in Ireland, we bring them to Dublin. They're removed on a ferry back to the UK on the same day."

Illegal migrants are entering the Republic of Ireland by crossing the 310-mile-long Northern Irish border where there is no passport control. However, the Irish police force, the Garda, have now set up checkpoints to snare those entering without the proper right to remain.

It's reported the Irish Government has said it will begin chartering deportation flights in the coming months and assign more Garda to tackling illegal immigration.

In major Irish cities like Dublin, huge tented communities have now sprung up populated by some of the tens of thousands of migrants hoping to claim asylum.

Protesters have taken to the streets in some parts of the Emerald Isle demanding a tougher stance on illegal migrants from the authorities.

Irish people will go to the polls on Friday November 29 for the country's general election and all the main parties have set out their stall as far as immigration is concerned.

Michael Collins of Independent Ireland said there had been a large influx of people into small rural communities. He insisted local residents raising concerns were not racists.

Mr Collins said there was no "planned approach" and "little or no proper consultation."

But Green Party leader and Integration minister Roderic O'Gorman defended his record on housing arriving migrants. He said: "The Green Party will always look to meet the humanitarian obligations to people fleeing here, fleeing war, fleeing persecution."

Irish Right to Change leader Joan Collins said Ireland had a "crisis" in health care provision and the Government was failing to build enough social homes.

She said: "It's not migrants' fault, it's successive governments' policy, neo liberal policies, that have impacted on communities."

Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald said the issue that had caused division was not migrant labour, but the system used to process international protection applicants.

She said: "The fact that this system is too slow, it's not properly resourced, and the rules, all of them, have not been applied and been seen to apply, and also the introduction of very vulnerable cohorts of people into communities that are stretched beyond stretch. That's unfair.

"It should never have happened, and it reflected not a planned approach, but the chaos within government on this."