Active investigations are ongoing into immigration crime in relation to the border on the island of Ireland, according to the Garda Commissioner.
Drew Harris said gardaí are in close contact with their colleagues in the UK around the area of immigration and immigration crime in particular.
Speaking in An Spidéal, Co Galway, Mr Harris said: "If we look across Europe we see that there's a huge extent of immigration crime, a lot of it being directed from outside Europe, but last year was one of the biggest movements of people into Europe that we've seen, equal to 2016."
He said a lot of the movement is being facilitated by criminal gangs, for what he called "excessive amounts of money".
"We're seeing an out-turn of that in terms of people arriving in Ireland and so our first responsibility is to investigate immigration crime and then human trafficking as well," he added.
Mr Harris said the investigations involved working with international partner law enforcement agencies.
He said part of the work is identifying who is moving illegally into the State, "but also to identify... those who are directing [it] and doing so for criminal purposes".
Asked if there are taxi companies bringing people from ports in Larne and Belfast to Dublin, he said: "We're very aware of that. We have to work closely with the authorities in Northern Ireland, particularly at the points of egress, be it ports or airports in terms of the identification of those movements."
He said a lot of information is being shared over who gardaí suspect is engaged in this.
"A lot of it is being directed for money and criminal profit," he said.
He said routine checks are also being carried out on public transport and around the suspicious movement of vehicles.
Mr Harris said there was a huge amount of movement across the border every day and that gardaí needed to be focused and act on information which it could only get if the force shared this with the authorities in Northern Ireland.
He said: "Monitoring is far too passive. This is active investigation and interception, but it is directed at those who are engaged in a criminal enterprise and a criminal conspiracy in respect of this crime."
Gardaí 'freed up' to carry out deportations - McEntee
Close to 700 deportation orders have been signed for this year, according to Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, who said this was significantly higher than the figure for this time last year.
Also speaking in An Spidéal, she said so far close to 8,000 people had applied for asylum in Ireland this year.
"I think based on those figures we will most likely see above 20,000 people coming to Ireland for International Protection.
"It would be difficult to speculate anything beyond that, but certainly the numbers are much higher than we've seen in the past."
She said the asylum process was being ramped up and an investment was being made in the International Protection Office (IPO) to make sure that the decision process was sped up, and that those who had a right to be here were given answers quickly.
"Importantly those who don't (have the right) as well, that they're given that negative decision quickly and they're asked to leave," she said.
She said gardaí are now working on a number of different operations to remove those who have been given the deportation orders.
The Government wanted people to remove themselves "before it gets to that point", she said.
She said the number of voluntary returns had also increased this year in tandem.
More than 100 gardaí who had been working behind desks had now been freed up to work with the Garda National Immigration Bureau to carry out deportation operations, Ms McEntee said.
"The reason that we're seeing those higher numbers is because of the accelerated procedure that I've introduced so that people coming from safe countries in particular and those coming from the country with the highest number of applicants, which at the moment is Nigeria.
"Their applications have been processed much more quickly and so those deportation letters have been issued much more quickly."
Minister McEntee said the Government could not allow a situation where a significant number of tents are appearing in any part of Dublin city centre or across the country.
She said An Garda Síochána and Dublin City Council had been working with the Department of Integration to move encampments on, but also to try to provide accommodation for those who are in tents.
"Nobody wants to see any person on the street in a tent," she said, adding that the Government had managed to provide hundreds of people who had been in tents in the city centre with an alternative place to sleep in the last two or three weeks alone.
Minister for Integration Roderic O'Gorman was now looking at longer-term environments and accommodation, she said, to allow larger numbers of people in tents to be placed while they go through the International Protection System.
Read more: Thornton Hall a 'logical' site for asylum seeker accommodation
She said her role as Minister for Justice was to make sure they could go through that system as quickly as possible.
"That's why I've more than doubled the staff that we have working there and that's why I'll continue to increase those numbers, that's why the number of applications we're processing has more than quadrupled in the last year," she said, adding that those numbers would continue to increase.
Asked if the erecting of tents was illegal and if they would be moved away on a weekly basis, she again said the Government was working in a very challenging environment.
"We're talking about people here. They've come to this country seeking solace, seeking international protection and nobody wants to see any person on the streets in tents."
Asked if the location of accommodation for those seeking asylum was being kept under wraps until the local elections had concluded, she said there were clear plans by Minister O'Gorman to develop larger scale state accommodation in order to move away from a reliance on private accommodation for international protection applicants.
She said a number of sites had already been identified with plans progressing as quickly as possible, and that there was "no secret" around this plan.
Tens of thousands of people had been accommodated by the Government, she said, particularly through the Department of Integration in the last two years with many people still coming to Ireland from countries like Ukraine, with an increase in International Protection applicants happening at the same time.
Additional reporting: Eleanor Burnhill
