Aontú’s bill to withdraw Ireland from the Migration Pact has been gathering steam in recent days, with its accompanying petition now having over 73,000 signatures. The bill hopes to remove Ireland from the Pact by revoking the Dáil’s previous opt-in. While Aontu’s logic makes sense, nothing would be so straight forward in our “ever closer union”. The opt-in clause, unfortunately, was a one way door, making the legal argument of the bill quite shaky. As the Department of Justice put it, there’s “no mechanism” for withdrawal.
If Ireland were to seek to re-establish our opt-out it would likely have to come through a UK-EU 2016-style renegotiation of terms of membership rather than a bill in the Oireachtas. Here Deputy Tóibín might find allies, as, ironically, the Committee on Justice published a report in which it recommended “opting out of the majority of the EU migration and asylum pact is reconsidered in light of [the] changing migration landscape,” because the committee had “serious concerns about the ability of the State to meet the commitments it is making.”
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