Should Ireland join Schengen?

Question

The Schengen Treaty allows people to travel across the 25 member countries without once needing to show a passport or ask permission from the government. It does away with border controls and gets Big Brother out of our lives for good.

Why doesn't Ireland join?

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

Because unless the UK also joins Schengen - and there's no sign that they will - then the border with Northern Ireland would need to become a much more serious affair. At the moment there are no border controls at all when you cross the border, but if it became one of the external borders of the Schengen Zone then it would need the full panoply of border fences, closed circuit TV, alarms, passports and ID cards, etc.

At the moment half a million people who were born in the Republic live in the UK, equivalent to about an eighth of the entire Irish-born population, and it's much more convenient for them to have a Common Travel Area with no passports between the UK and the Republic, than it would be to have a borderless area with the rest of the Schengen Zone.

Answer 3

Ireland is a island so there is no call for it and people who travel here need to use their passport to fly so it would not benefit any1 at all what so ever..u get me

Answer 4

That's not all that the Schengen Treaty would change.  At the moment we're being given absolutely no information on it by our government - who are fairly untrustworthy and dodgy to say the least.  The last time we'd to vote we were showered with information.  Why would anyone vote for something without knowing what it's about?  I'll go and look it up myself, but I seriously doubt many people will bother.  Even one of the papers last week, either the Examiner or the Sunday Times had an article by a journalist who tried to get info on it and said it was ridiculously hard.