Ireland’s prime minister has insisted the UK must respect an existing arrangement between the two countries to take back asylum seekers.

Simon Harris told Sky News the UK must honour a deal that has been in place since 2020 as a row escalates over the Irish government’s new plans to return to the UK asylum seekers who cross the border into the Republic from Northern Ireland.

Irish justice minister Helen McEntee told a parliamentary committee last week that more than 80% of recent arrivals in Ireland came via the land border with Northern Ireland.

The UK government has said it will not take back asylum seekers who cross the border into Ireland “until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France”.

The number of migrants crossing the English Channel from the continent in small boats during the first four months of the year reached its highest ever level at the weekend.

On Tuesday morning, Irish PM Mr Harris told Sky News: “There is already an agreement in place between Ireland and Britain since 2020.

“What we’re doing is giving legal clarity in relation to that agreement which will allow us to designate the UK as a safe country again.

“It’s also very important for people in Britain to understand that this is a two-way agreement.

“This is to ensure that refugees can be sent in both directions if their application is inadmissible.

“We also have a legitimate expectation that agreements between our two countries are honoured.”

Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said there are “operational arrangements” between the UK and Ireland but insisted there is “not a legal obligation to accept the return of asylum seekers and under those operational arrangements no asylum seekers have been returned to the UK”.

“It’s up to the UK government who we do and do not accept into the country,” he added.

The row between the two countries comes as the UK government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda came into law last week.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister and foreign secretary Micheal Martin said the threat of deportation to Rwanda was causing “fearful” migrants to head for Ireland instead of the UK.

Mr Harris said on Sunday Ireland would “not provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges”.

He added on Tuesday that the largest percentage of people coming to Ireland illegally recently has been from Nigeria so last week they brought in fast-track applications for people from Nigeria.

“We have every right to have our own migration policy,” he told Sky News.

“People have every expectation that it would be enforced, that it would be firm, that it would be rules-based.

“And I think we also all have a legitimate expectation that agreements between two countries are honoured.”

A major operation by the Home Office to detain migrants across the UK in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda has begun “weeks earlier than expected”.

But it has been reported that more than half of the asylum seekers allocated for removal to Rwanda cannot be found, according to the government’s own impact assessment.

Ministers from the UK and Ireland met in London on Monday as part of a planned conference, involving Mr Martin and the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris.

Thousands of asylum seekers set for removal to Rwanda who have not reported to the Home Office “will be found and will be removed” by law enforcement, a minister has told Sky News.

A Home Office impact assessment published on Monday said only 2,143 of the 5,700 asylum seekers Rwanda has agreed to accept from the UK attend regular check-ins and “can be located for detention”.

This leaves 3,557 people not in regular contact.

However, government minister Victoria Atkins told Sky News: “Some are already detained in facilities, others are perhaps staying with friends or family. But the Home Office is in contact with much of the cohort.

“The Home Office is used to this, operationally, law enforcement officers are used to this.

“We want the message to go out loud and clear that if somebody doesn’t report as they should do, they shouldn’t think that they’ll get away with it. They will be found.

“Law enforcement have a variety of measures to find people.

“They will be found and they will be removed.

“I don’t pretend this is going to be easy. And we are very much doing this.”

Ms Atkins insisted all 5,700 people identified in the first group “as well as others” will be sent to Rwanda by the end of the year.

Only asylum seekers who arrived between 1 July 2022 and 29 June 2023 and who already received a letter telling them about the Rwanda plan are in this first group.

The first flights are planned for this July, which indicates no one who arrived in Britain on a small boat during the previous year will be onboard.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he wants the first flights to take off within 10 to 12 weeks after the law was passed last week.

The controversial law was passed after a bill was created stating that Rwanda should be regarded as a safe country “for the purposes of relocating people, including in UK courts and tribunals”.

It suffered a number of setbacks and delays, including the Supreme Court ruling the scheme to send people arriving in the UK in small boats to Rwanda “unlawful” last year.

Ms Atkins added: “We want to deal with this. We don’t pretend it’s easy, but we believe that Rwanda is one of the many tools we have at our disposal.”

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After the law was passed, Mr Sunak said there were now 2,200 detention spaces and 200 dedicated caseworkers had been trained to process claims quickly.

About 25 courtrooms have been made available and 150 judges will provide 5,000 sitting days, he added.

The prime minister also said there were 500 “highly trained individuals ready to escort illegal migrants all the way to Rwanda, with 300 more trained in the coming week”.

Legal challenges are still expected, with campaigners saying they are identifying asylum seekers who may be singled out for deportation and will be lodging legal challenges.

A clash with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – which blocked the first flight from taking off in June 2022 – could also be on the cards.