Government has no plans to make Malta's Search and Rescue (SAR) Zone any smaller, Prime Minister Robert Abela said.

He was answering to a parliamentary question put forward by PN MP Jason Azzopardi who asked the PM if the government is planning or thinking of shrinking Malta's SAR Zone.

Abela replied with a straight forward answer, saying that the government has no plans to do so.

The government has been insisting that Malta can no longer accept irregular migrants, who are regularly spotted in Malta's SAR Zone, to disembark as Malta has reached its capacity and is "full-up".

Malta's battle with migration has been an ongoing issue for years with no solution among all EU member states being found. The situation only got worse with the COVID-19 pandemic which saw Malta and Italy, which are the two of the main Mediterranean countries to take in irregular migrants at sea, close their ports.

Following a number of measures that the PM took, like the infamous 'floating prisons' - as dubbed by a number of NGOs, Malta received a lot of criticism on the issue, but the government insisted that Malta is full-up and it still holds on to this idea until today. During his speech last Sunday, Abela, spoke about his input on migration during the European Council Summit and said; "the main point has to be that Malta is full up. If we keep saying we can take more we will have failed."

He had appealed on Sunday for the new PN leader and upcoming Opposition leader Bernard Grech to join the government in not letting anyone in the party hinder the government's effort to stop the arrivals of more migrants. This was in reference to the inquiry that NGO Repubblika, aided by Jason Azzopardi, had opened against the PM and the crew of the P52 boat for attempted homicide, when they allegedly sabotaged a migrant vessel. Soon after Azzopardi renounced his role in the inquiry and Abela, as well as the crew, were cleared from these allegations.

"We cannot have the Opposition and civil society instigating anything about the difficult stands we are having to take. One has to understand that this is the only way we started being heard," Abela said on Sunday.