Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Baroness for having introduced the subject of Northern Ireland somewhat earlier than Clauses 46 and 47 in Part 3, to which we will come in the fullness of time. Since she has done so and I cannot be certain that I shall be standing in the Chamber when we reach those amendments, I will ask the Minister one question pertaining to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which has been the subject of two exchanges for which I have been present over the past year. In the first of them, I cannot recall whether the Minister was sitting next to a colleague who was making a Statement or whether he was actually answering questions himself, but the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, and I were engaged in asking, because of the possibility of people who were hostile to this realm entering the United Kingdom by the back door across the border, whether conversations were going on with the Republic of Ireland about strengthening that border. The answer that we received on that occasion was, yes, there were such conversations going on. I recall, in a much more recent exchange, the Minister saying that there were not now conversations going on, which may have been out of context. If he were able to clarify exactly the status of the relationship with the Government in the Republic on that subject, so much the better.