The Irish government has said it believes around 80 per cent of international protection applicants who have arrived in Ireland in recent months have come across the land border from the UK, though the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) has challenged ministers to show their working.

Justice minister Helen McEntee is expected to bring forward emergency legislation designating the UK as a safe country to which applicants can be returned, after the High Court recently ruled that the way in which the UK had been designated as a safe country was not compatible with EU law.

However, the UK government has indicated that it will not accept asylum seekers returned from Ireland in what is developing into a major diplomatic row.

In a joint statement, Amnesty International’s UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh and Irish chief executive Stephen Bowen accused the two governments of “pointing fingers at each other rather than addressing the asylum claims of people on their respective territories”.

This is a “deeply unedifying spectacle that harms both the international refugee system and the people the system is there to protect”, they said.

They continued: “The UK is currently acting as an international freeloader in refugee matters, expecting other countries to process people’s asylum claims when it flat out refuses to do so itself.

“If the Irish government also ignores the needs and rights of people the UK is abusing, it will only make itself complicit in the UK’s hypocrisy.

“All countries must accept their international obligations to people seeking asylum on their soil — one country’s refusal to do so cannot justify another to follow suit.

“The Irish government — as well as the EU and the wider international community — should not mimic the UK but instead apply sustained pressure on the UK for it to abandon its shameful policy of threatening people seeking asylum with perpetual limbo or expulsion to Rwanda.”