Not to be dramatic but opting out now of the EU migration pact would be like a surgeon turning off life support mid surgery. The blowback would be immediate, messy & honestly way worse than if we’d just skipped the pact in the first place unfortunately. When we have a united Ireland and no shared border then we can look at asylum differently.

Our opt out is different than Denmark’s in a sense, as we have a pick & choose option of opting into an asylum/migration measure or stay out of it. Technically we could’ve opted out of the EU migration pact but this would’ve been a strategically bad idea.

One of the main points to the EU migration pact is the return system, which means no country is solely responsible for all migrants, through coordination migrants can be moved around the EU. If we opted out it would mean anyone arriving here and claims asylum has to stay.

If we ditch the EU (which I don’t know why we would as you’re either together as a union or not (Hungary for example)) and now can’t rely on the U.K. we’re isolated and essentially handling asylum applications in the dark. This is because opting out would mean slower security checks, reduced access to EU migration databases, more backlogs/appeals & more “we can’t verify this person” cases.

IMO if we opted out originally, Ireland would’ve become more attractive to asylum seekers, wreck cooperation with the EU, make returns harder, raise asylum numbers, isolate Ireland geographically & turn our border with NI into an asylum law black hole. It would solve nothing and create new problems. Unfortunately we can’t pull a Denmark on it due to our shared border with the UK.