Belfast City Council is to look into making a legal challenge to a plan to introduce electronic travel passes for foreign nationals across the Irish land border.
At the recent meeting of the council’s City Growth and Regeneration Committee, elected members and council officers alike claimed significant damage would result from the UK government’s plan for an electronics travel authorisation, especially for tourism in Belfast.
Sinn Fein Councillor Ronan McLaughlin proposed a report from the council’s legal services looking into the possibility of a legal challenge by the city against the UK government’s plan for an Electronic Travel Authorisation pass. It was accepted by committee members.
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The council also agreed to invite representatives from the tourism industry to the council to develop a picture of how the UK government bill would affect Belfast, and to form a strategy to “offset” the effect of ETA.
Under new post- Brexit immigration and border control legislation going through Westminster, called “The Nationality and Borders Bill,” non-Irish EU citizens living in or visiting the Republic of Ireland would require an Electronic Travel Authorisation to cross the border into Northern Ireland.
As it stands the bill means all non-visa national visitors into the UK, who do not hold British or Irish citizenship, will have to apply for ETA. It is planned to begin in 2025. Under the plans there will be a charge and the pass will entitle the holder to one visit into the UK.
The visa-waiver style scheme, which would be similar to the one used in the US, would not apply to Irish or UK citizens, who are guaranteed free movement around the island under the terms of the long-standing common travel area agreement.
A Belfast council officer told the committee: “Belfast has a role as a gateway city, and benefits significantly from tourism. It provides a very high level of employment in this city, and has been one of the highest growth sectors for employment in the city - currently growing at 19 percent, which is three times other sectors, pre-pandemic.
“Undoubtedly this does provide a threat to the growth of tourism in the North of Ireland and provides a significant threat to Belfast. If this comes in 2025 it could provide a significant barrier to people travelling to the North.”
Research within the tourist industry forecasts that an estimated 25 percent of visitors from outside the Common Travel Area would not travel to Northern Ireland should ETA be a requirement.
The combination of the forecasted drop of both Irish resident and international visitors totals 15 percent of current visitors to NI, bringing numbers down from 800,000 to 681,920 visitors. This drop would mean a loss of around £10million in additional spend to the NI economy in financial year 2024/25.
Sinn Fein Councillor Ciaran Beattie told the council committee: “If we are serious about building a destination hub to attract more visitors to the city, potentially in a couple of years time we could be in trouble.”
He said: “We are going to see lots of jobs lost, not just jobs directly involved in tourism, it will impact taxi drivers, restaurants, cafes, hotels - it goes on and on. This is a serious concern.”
SDLP Councillor Donal Lyons said: “It also impacts on the creative industry and cultural groups in this city. When you think of the type of events that are put on to attract international visitors, like the golf in Portrush in 2019, there is also a sporting aspect. It has to be said the Tories are playing with fire on this one.” He suggested representatives from the Northern Ireland Office would have to be brought before the council at a future date.
Last month Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance, Tourism Northern Ireland and Tourism Ireland recently gave written evidence to the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, calling the measures “unworkable.”
They stated: “The tourism industry in Northern Ireland and across the island have not been consulted at any stage in this process despite being key stakeholders. Introducing an ETA requirement to cross the border in Ireland is of huge significance to our industry, yet in spite of this we see none of our concerns taken on board thus far.”
It adds: “Northern Ireland is unique in that it is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another state. There are over 300 crossing points on this border. It seamlessly sits on fields, villages, streets and bridges.
“A requirement to have an ETA for every single crossing could run into hundreds of pounds per day for tourists or non-British or Irish residents of the Republic of Ireland on the border. It would be impossible (and undesirable) to validate every crossing making the proposed legislation totally unworkable.”
“Independent travellers frequently cross the border multiple times whether travelling by rental car or bus. It would be common to go through the north via Derry/Londonderry to Donegal and back via Belfast to Dublin. A relatively standard itinerary such as this would require multiple single-entry ETAs and would be a significant extra expense as well as an administrative and psychological deterrent to tourism.
“There are many non-Irish EU nationals employed in the tourism sector in the RoI including, but not limited to coach drivers. They are employed and legally resident in RoI, yet their job requires crossing the border, sometimes multiple times per day.
“Under the proposed scheme they would require a separate ETA for every entry. In addition to these there are the tours which travel to Ireland from mainland Europe, for whom this will be equally unworkable. In an area already experiencing a skills shortage this could prove devastating.”
It adds: “If implemented in its current form this will be expensive and tourists may likely decide not to bother with the northern part of any itinerary. Furthermore, with fuel costs, inflation and now ETA, the risk is that many global tour operators will exclude Belfast and NI from their itineraries as no longer a feasible option.”
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