Downing Street said the British government would not take back asylum seekers who had entered Ireland until EU-wide asylum rules were changed.
Last week the Irish government announced emergency legislation to send increasing numbers of asylum seekers back from Northern Ireland.
However, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said it was for the UK to “decide who we allow into the country and who we don’t”.
Irish and British ministers met on Monday to discuss the asylum system.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Of course we will not start accepting returns from the EU, just as the EU will not accept asylum returns from the UK to France.”
“Even if Ireland were to pass legislation, it will be up to the UK government to decide who we accept into the country and who we don’t.”
The Irish government says it is experiencing an influx of asylum seekers from Northern Ireland because they are “fearful” of being deported to Rwanda.
And it says it will not allow Ireland to create a “loophole” for others’ “migration challenges”.
Ireland’s deputy leader Micheál Martin denied the dispute was developing, but a planned meeting between Home Secretary James Cleverly and Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee was postponed at short notice late on Sunday evening.
But the asylum system was the focus of a pre-arranged meeting held on Monday between Mr Martin and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.
The meeting of the Intergovernmental Conference, which was established under the Good Friday Agreement and has met regularly since then.
After the meeting, Mr Heaton-Harris said: “Not in any way.” [do] “We want to turn our relationship with Ireland on its head” in relation to asylum applications.
But he added that since Brexit the UK has been instructed to “deal with the EU as a whole” – and that is the government’s current approach.
The UK government remained committed to “protecting” the Common Travel Area (CTA) agreement, which allows free travel between the UK and Ireland, “from abuse” by asylum seekers.
Mr Martin said the emergency legislation was not an attempt to change the current agreement with the UK.
Instead, they should “legislate for the decision” of the Irish Supreme Court, which found that Ireland could not designate the UK as a “safe third country” and could not send back asylum seekers because they faced deportation to Rwanda.
Ireland said 80% of recent asylum seekers arrived from Northern Ireland – but gave no details on how this figure was determined.
Ms McEntee said that so far this year a clear majority of people seeking asylum in Ireland had applied at an international protection office rather than at a port or airport, suggesting that people were entering the country via the land border Enter the United Kingdom.
BBC Verify was unable to find published figures on the 6,000 migrants the Irish government said arrived in Ireland this way and asked the Irish government.
The company did not provide figures, but said its “firm assessment, based on the experiences of employees and others working in the field, as well as on the material collected during interviews, is that in most cases those who apply to the had already applied for the IPO for the first time. “the land border”.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has argued that any increased flow of people into Ireland shows that Rwanda’s asylum policy, which came into effect last week, is already having a deterrent effect.
On Sunday, Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Simon Harris said he would “not allow the migration policies of others to compromise the integrity of our own”.
He said he had asked Ms McEntee to bring legislation to Cabinet on Tuesday that would allow asylum seekers to be returned to Britain.
Under a new deal between the two countries in 2022, the British government will pay £500 million to fund more border patrols to prevent small boat crossings into Britain, as well as a new detention center in France.
However, there is no specific agreement that allows the UK to send asylum seekers back to France once they have crossed the Channel.
Rwanda scared them off
Ireland’s proposed legislation follows a ruling by the Irish Supreme Court that said Ireland could not designate the UK as a “safe third country” or send back asylum seekers because of the risk they would be sent to Rwanda.
Nick Henderson, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, said he believes there may be a link between policy changes in the UK and a rise in asylum seekers in Ireland over the past two years.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Henderson said it was “unclear” whether the new law would be “sufficient to get around the problems identified by the judge”.
Many of those who have entered Britain illegally in recent years came from France via small boat crossings.
In 2023, a total of 29,437 people entered the UK via this route.
And Home Office figures show more than 7,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after traveling so far this year – a new record for the first four months of a calendar year.
Under Rwanda’s policy, anyone entering the UK illegally will be deported to the East African country and given the opportunity to seek asylum there.
The plan was approved by Parliament last week after months of political wrangling and legal challenges. The government has announced that the first flights should take off within 10 to 12 weeks.
The Interior Ministry confirmed late Sunday that it would begin detaining migrants in the coming weeks in preparation for the first flights to Rwanda.
This came after the Guardian reported that the detentions were due to begin on Monday.