Tensions over immigration have risen in Ireland amid an increase in migrant arrivals and an acute housing crisis that has forced some asylum seekers to sleep in tents and the Government to ask the church to put up migrants.

Mr Martin, who is also Ireland’s foreign minister, said: “So, they’re leaving the UK and they are taking opportunities to come to Ireland, crossing the border to get sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda.”

Dublin believes migrants and refugees, many from Nigeria, are travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland before crossing the open land border with the Republic, which is guaranteed by a UK-EU Brexit treaty.

The UK and Ireland also share a common travel area, which predates both countries’ membership of the EU.

Mr Martin said: “Migration arguably caused Brexit, or certainly motivated a lot of people to vote for Brexit to ‘take back control’ and so on.

“But control hasn’t happened in respect of migration. Eastern European workers in Britain have been replaced by workers from further afield,” he added in comments reported by the Irish Independent.