Simon Calder

speaker

81 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Aug

Simon Calder’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Claire Byrne Show · Passports now required for Britain-Ireland ferry · 27 Aug 2026 podcast

Uh good morning.

And you have really, really bad news I think for a lot of people who will have been used to the idea that you simply uh get a ferry either from Dublin or from Rosslair across to uh uh Wales and that you're able to use just a photo ID like a driving licence a student card, a bus pass, and that's all you need and for lots of people who whose international travel

Goes no further than uh GB, it's always been great that you can take advantage of the uh common travel area and the fact that you don't need a passport.

But as you say from September the 28th, the UK Border Force is right, every passenger uh has to provide their data, first and last name, gender, date of birth, nationality, and the

Ferry companies have said, um, okay, well the only way we can get that is if we insist everyone has a passport or indeed an Irish passport card.

There is a lot of concern in the Home Office, the Interior Ministry in London, that uh there it's difficult to manage who's coming and going across the Irish Sea, because quite often the um the uh data that people provide to the ferry companies isn't necessarily checked.

But that has to be seen, of course, Claire, in the context of the fact that there's a

a a a three hundred mile, five hundred kilometer open border between um the Republic of Ireland.

northern Ireland and that anybody who wants to circumvent this would simply get a ferry or indeed a flight to uh Belfast and um go by road or rail into the Republic.

So uh there's a great deal of fury about it, I understand, in the travel industry.

It seems to be making life um more difficult for a lot of people, um, without necessarily bringing any benefits.

Uh no, I mean I I think there might be a little bit of flexibility if you've got an expired passport that's not too old, for instance, that might work.

But of course, a lot of people, and this is I think going to affect the very young and the very old.

So for example, you've got a newborn, you want to take it to a family in G B, um, a really easy way to do that would be just to um uh drive uh

onto the ferry and drive across and and and go where you need to go and you wouldn't need to worry about getting a a passport for the uh uh for for the baby.

That's not going to be possible anymore.

But of course older travellers, quite a lot of them, if all they're doing is shuttling across the Irish Sea every so often to see family, um, th they would normally just say, Well I don't I don't want a passport, I don't need one but

Now suddenly they may and

Uh I I have found well besides the so called Belfast bypass, which is one way of getting around it, British Airways um tells me that it is not going to be requiring this.

So you will be able without a passport to fly from Dublin to London Heathrow.

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