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The Irish government is insisting that there is an “operating agreement” in place to allow Ireland and the UK to send asylum seekers into one-another’s jurisdiction, while at the same time the UK government is flatly refusing to allow this.

Irish premier Simon Harris repeated his claim on Wednesday that this “operating agreement” existed since 2020, adding that the UK government has confirmed this.

Meanwhile ministers were speaking in the House of Commons about how they will not permit asylum seekers entering Ireland from the UK to be returned to UK territory.

The ongoing dispute comes as the Irish cabinet approved emergency legislation to allow the UK to be designated a “safe country”, enabling asylum seekers to be transferred back there (overturning a court decision that the UK was not safe).

The Taoiseach said a post-Brexit deal was struck in 2020 and allows asylum seekers whose applications are “inadmissible” to be “returned” to the UK and vice versa.

But the Irish Department of Justice has refused to publish the wording of the arrangement.

A spokesman said: “We do not provide operational details of immigration procedures so as to avoid any impact on the effectiveness of such operations.”

The Irish claims contrast with the rhetoric on display in Westminster on Wednesday.

“I can confirm that the United Kingdom has no legal obligation to accept returns of illegal migrants from Ireland,” the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House.

This was re-emphasised soon after by Tom Pursglove, a junior Tory minister responsible for legal migration, who said: “As the Prime Minister has rightly said, including at Prime Minister’s questions, we are not going to accept returns from the EU via Ireland when the EU does not accept returns to France, from where illegal migrants are coming to the United Kingdom.”

All of this comes against a backdrop of the UK government attempting to keep alive its plans to send a small minority of asylum seekers to Rwanda as a deterrent.

However, it emerged in recent days that around three-fifths of those 5,700 people destined for Rwanda have since vanished from the RADAR of UK authorities.

Dispute over the return of asylum seekers between Ireland and the UK simmers on as taoiseach claims London has confirmed existence of deal