Should I use my British or Irish passport when travelling?

[TinselMakeover]

I have dual nationality.

Both passports are up for renewal. The Irish one expired about 20 years ago.

Do you think one, rather than the other, is easier or more welcome for travel? A friend told me Irish passport more welcome but that could be just the craic 😂

Should I renew just one or both? Obviously extra expense.

I live in England 😘

🎵 if you’re Irish come into the parlour 🎶 🍀 😃

It’s just what I read online!!

You can travel together if one person has British and one Irish. It is officially allowed

I'm aware of this 🤣 what I meant is that when I get off a flight from the U.K. with mainly British passengers, I skip through the EU queue while my partners has to queue with the Brits. He takes longer to get through passport control.

I overlap mine.

so British is due in 2024, Irish up in 2028.

that way i’m hopefully never going to get caught with an expired passport, not enough left on it to enter the EU etc. and spreads the cost.

Irish passport much better if your plane is hijacked

Where are all the people travelling that having a British passport is giving you delays? I have travelled to several countries in the EU since Brexit hand haven’t been held up at all. Yes, my passport has needed to be stamped but there has only ever been one queue. Arriving or departing.

www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index I came across this the other day - fascinating!

Lol what

You’re always meant to travel into a country with that citizenship. We each have 4 passports (and there’s 4 of us!!) but we travel with all of them. So if we go to Australia, we’ll leave with the Australian one but coming back into Ireland we’ll use the Irish one. So we’ll leave Sydney presenting the Irish one if that makes sense.

Within EU, we’ll travel to France presenting our French one at Dublin airport and leave Paris showing our Irish one. But we always travel with all of them just in case. We never used to take all of them before Brexit but UK passport seems a bit useless now!

Sorry not sure if any of this makes sense 😂

British and US passport holders tend to be targets in a difficult situation.

DH was advised to get a non-British passport years ago when he was travelling to remote areas.

Also be aware that when renewing your British passport, if you declare that you have dual nationality, you’ll be required to send in your other passport.

I don’t remember having to do that … I had to take photos of every page last time…

DH had to physically send his in - hopefully he can just do the photo thing next time.

Have the option of both would be my advice.

It was a child's passport, so maybe different?

Irish. You can travel to EU easier and it is the same as a British passport when you come back. We used the husbands and boys Irish passports when we went to France. Unfortunately I only have a British one.

All my EU holidays since brexit, I've got through passport control 45 mins - an hour before others from my plane. I go to the loo, grab a drink, catch up on messages, wait for our bags with a book. There is a separate queue for EU arrivals at all the EU airports I've been to. Mostly the queue isn't noticeable as it has so few people in it, I've never had more than 5-6 people in front of me, and several times I've walked straight through.

We had to wait 2 hours for passport control in Dover (everyone- regardless of passport) and nearly missed the ferry!

That certainly doesn’t reflect my experience at all. It has never taken me an hour to get through passport control. Usually around 20-30 minutes, if that.

The queues I have been in have been a mix of UK and EU passports. The EU passengers may have saved 30 seconds because their passports didn’t need to be stamped.

Almost an anticlimax considering the predicted chaos.

EU has exit immigration which the UK doesn't have

If the UK doesn't have exit immigration, then surely it doesn't matter what passport you use to board a flight?

If you have more than one passport, you could use any of them to board a plane? As long as you enter say the US with your American passport or Germany with your German one?

Does anyone know more about this?

But yes, having an EU passport definitely speeds things up when entering an EU country on a plane from the UK!!

I guess it depends on where you're travelling to and when you're travelling but on my most recent holiday, we landed just after 2 other flights from the UK and 1 from somewhere else outside of Europe. 4 large planes of people queuing for passport and control for stamps, and I walked straight through passport control.

I have dual nationality and have been told at border control in Schipol that I have to use my EU ID card when entering and leaving the EU, so I'd also definitely go with the Irish one. I have to use my British one for entering the UK, though (I'm not Irish) but it seems as though there would never really be a reason that you would need the British one.

The UK uses the API for non domestic travel for border control.

That makes no sense at all. Most large EU airports have Schengen and non-Schengen terminals so yes, obviously there'll be a bit of a walk to connect to internal flights. But a) this won't have been impacted by Brexit as the UK never was part of Schengen, b) there are no mysterious agreements with third countries governing gate positions and c) OPs passport won't make a difference either way, she'll disembark the same as everybody else.