Asylum seekers are pouring into Ireland because they have been put off the UK by the Rwanda policy, Ireland’s deputy prime minister has said.

Micheál Martin, who is also a former Taoiseach, was speaking after the Irish government said more than 80 per cent of asylum seekers in Ireland had crossed the border from Northern Ireland.

He claimed Rishi Sunak’s “knee-jerk” policy to deport Channel migrants to Rwanda was already having a deterrent effect and encouraging asylum seekers to flee to Ireland.

“I believe the Rwanda effect is impacting on Ireland. And I think that didn’t happen today or yesterday. It’s been growing since the first iteration and publication of that strategy around Rwanda,” Mr Martin said in Anman, Jordan on Wednesday.

“I don’t think anyone’s gone to Rwanda yet but to me it’s reflective of a policy,” he said. “But it is having real impact on Ireland now in terms of people being fearful in the UK – maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.”

Tensions over immigration have risen in Ireland amid an increase in migrant arrivals and an acute housing crisis that has forced some asylum seekers to sleep in tents and the Government to ask the church to put up migrants.

Mr Martin, who is also Ireland’s foreign minister, said: “So, they’re leaving the UK and they are taking opportunities to come to Ireland, crossing the border to get sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda.”

Dublin believes migrants and refugees, many from Nigeria, are travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland before crossing the open land border with the Republic, which is guaranteed by a UK-EU Brexit treaty.

The UK and Ireland also share a common travel area, which predates both countries’ membership of the EU.

Mr Martin said: “Migration arguably caused Brexit, or certainly motivated a lot of people to vote for Brexit to ‘take back control’ and so on.

“But control hasn’t happened in respect of migration. Eastern European workers in Britain have been replaced by workers from further afield,” he added in comments reported by the Irish Independent.

The centre-Right Fianna Fáil politician said: “I think the most effective way we can deal with the migration crisis is to deal with war and conflict and the developmental challenges around the world.

“We have 11 million people displaced from Ukraine and millions in Sudan,” he added, “But the sort of knee-jerk reaction like the Rwanda policy, in my view, isn’t going to really do anything to deal with the issue.”

In October 2023, Leo Varadkar, the then prime minister, claimed Ireland made a “better offering” to refugees than the UK as he announced Ireland was at the limit of the support it could offer.

It has been reported more than 80 per cent of asylum claims were made at the International Protection Office in Dublin, without an application being first made at a port or airport.

The Irish Government believes that almost all those people have arrived from the UK.

In Ireland, asylum seekers receive a weekly expenses payment of £32.60 per adult and £25.57 per child. Asylum seekers can apply to work in Ireland if their claim is not resolved in five months, which is not the case in the UK.

The Home Office in the UK offers an allowance of £37.75 a week for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. For people in accommodation where meals are provided, like some hotels, people receive £9.58 a week. There is a huge backlog in asylum cases, which means people staying on support for months.

Infrastructure on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland has gradually been dismantled since the Good Friday Agreement more than 25 years ago.

During the Brexit negotiations, Dublin insisted that the border on the island of Ireland be kept “invisible”, without infrastructure such as checkpoints. It argued this would protect the peace process and safeguard Ireland’s place in the EU’s Single Market. Brexiteers accused Dublin of “weaponising” the border.

The UK and EU eventually agreed to create an Irish Sea border for British goods and animals entering Northern Ireland to prevent a hard Irish border.

Helen McEntee, the justice minister, told an Irish Parliament scrutiny committee earlier this week: “This is the challenge that we have, that we have advocated for an open border on this island. It is absolutely a challenge.”