Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many requests have been made by the Irish government for the UK to accept an asylum seeker since 2016.

Prior to leaving the EU, the UK participated in the Dublin Regulation which allowed us to return third country nationals to other Member States, using the first safe country principle. Our statistics on Dublin III returns requests are published online and can be found here: (Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)).

Following our departure from the EU, we agreed to an operational arrangement with Ireland which allows for the return and readmission of asylum seekers. We do not routinely publish any statistics regarding the returns requests made under our operational arrangements.