Are there any cons to applying for an Irish passport?

[battenburg100]

Hi
With Brexit so close now, I'm in a dilemma whether or not to apply for an Irish passport. I'm hesitant as although I can see the benefits of having one, alongside my British passport, there are bound to be negatives too - but I'm not sure what they may be, so I would be grateful for any mumsnetters feedback....

Background info - I was born in the UK and have a British passport - my mum was born in Northern Ireland. My sister who lives in France was worried about her employment status there, so applied for and received her Irish passport. She now has dual nationality which has pleased her French employers, but what could be the consequences, particularly negative ones, of me having both types of passport living here in the UK?

Cherry your link shows that your husband is entitled to apply for Irish citizenship through his Irish-born grandparent and is in category D, regardless of whether his mother applied for an Irish passport or not (she is already an Irish citizen).

If you weren't born and raised in Ireland, and have an English accent you shouldn't be getting the passport. I think it's ridiculous all the English suddenly wanting to benefit from their ancestry. Your parents/grandparents turned their back on Ireland

Don’t be so bloody narrow minded. I have an Irish passport, because I live in the North, so I automatically have duel citizenship. My children have applied for theirs too. It’s a huge financial benefit to the South, having so many applicants and no negative effects on the locals.

He cannot therefore register as a child born outside of Ireland. Urban myth you just have to have an Irish grandparent

He can. His mother is already an Irish citizen - she doesn't need to do anything and what he does is not dependent on her actions.

Cherry was it your parent or grandparent who was born on the island of Ireland? Because if it was your parent, you didn't have to register first. You were Irish already. It's not an urban myth, it's Irish nationality law.

www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/irish_citizenship/irish_citizenship_through_birth_or_descent.html

being a relatively poor country compared to the UK

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about on that one. Do you think we all live in huts on small holdings surviving on spuds?

www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/business/irish/irish-economy-to-be-eurozones-fastestgrowing-through-to-2024-36518208.html

If you or your kids have an Irish passport and they implement conscription it’s very possible you would legally have to do it and you might even be arrested in any part of the EU if you don’t (Britain wouldn’t get involved in dual citizenship cases).

This is also a load of scaremongering nonsense. Irish neutrality is a deeply embedded value, our armed forces are famed for their peacekeeping role, conscription would never wash and no one is going to be forced into joining an 'EU army' anytime soon.

I figured it would cost similar to get me and my two kids Irish passports, plus then renewing two passports each time. I just don't know if it's worth it at this stage? My DH says it isn't but he might just be jealous as he can't get one

You would still have to wait for him the other side of Passport Control.

I would agree 100% on Irish neutrality not being up for negotiation. It’s an intrinsic part of Irish history and Ireland has a long and esteemed history of providing peace keeping forces in many places in the world. There is no appetite in the country to change our view to being a part of any army which is part of a conflict that I can see. The conscription to a European army is scaremongering in my opinion.

My father was born in West Cork. I was advised by the embassy I needed to prove descent before getting my passport then had to register my children as foreign births, but maybe it’s changed. I’m going to look again for my husband but finding proof my be a challenge as grandmother died when his mother was sixteen.

My mum is eligible to claim an Irish passport. Does that then mean I can claim it too once she does, as technically I will be the daughter of an Irish passport holder. Or are there restrictions in place for this?

QuinionsRainbow

"Don't forget you have to apply to have your birth registered on the Foreign Births Register first. That confirms your Irish citizenship, then you can apply for a passport."

No you don't. Never even heard of this before.

I’ve not seen the online tool before. He’s going to be excited!

A child of an Irish born parent does have to prove descent, yes. You can't just say your dad was born in West Cork and they say right you are, here's your passport. But you providing that evidence isn't the same thing as having to register as a citizen cherry. What you were doing was proving your citizenship. In the same way as someone born in Ireland during the period where that got you automatic citizenship would still have to prove that.

Someone getting citizenship through a grandparent born in Ireland has to provide proof of that, then also register too. That's what you did for your kids. They had one more stage to go through than you did, because they were one generation further away.

Zukman where was she born and how is she eligible?

Shitmewithyourrhythmstick Yes I think that’s where my husband’s application would fall down. I’m not sure he could prove descent as records and his mothers memory of details are sketchy, at best. I suppose we could start applying for records but even where granny was born isn’t clear. MIL thinks Dundalk. She isn’t clear which year her mother would have been born in either. Not terribly helpful!

CherryPavlova, would your mum’s birth date be on her medical records?

Sorry mil

stick my mum was born in Scotland but her blood grandfather was from Ireland and born there in around 1910. My Mum’s parents split up when she was a baby, and so took her step fathers surname growing up, but Irish dad is on the birth cert

but her blood father! sorry

*QuinionsRainbow

"Don't forget you have to apply to have your birth registered on the Foreign Births Register first. That confirms your Irish citizenship, then you can apply for a passport."

No you don't. Never even heard of this before*

You may not have heard of it before, but that's the procedure I had to go through ten years ago to get my citizenship and passport based on my grandmother's Irish birth. My brother has just gone through the same procedure, and my sister is thinking of doing it too.

As someone pointed out above, I got this a bit wrong. Children born to a parent with Irish citizenship are ipso facto automatically Irish citizens and thus immediately eligible to obtain passports. My grndmother was born in Ireland, and thus my late mother, born in England, had Irish, something we didn't discover until after she had died. To get my Irish citizenship, I first had to get my birth, in England, entered in the Foreign Births Register, for which Ihad to prove my descent using birth/mariage/death certificates a appropriate..

If she was eligible through her granddad born in Ireland but nobody has been born in Ireland since zukman, she'd need to have acquired Irish citizenship before you were born in order to be able to pass it to you. That's the only way to get it through a great grandparent.

Wrt to Elbows post about her DH's job not permitting him to hold an Irish passport, then yes, this does happen. Back in the 90s I was told by my then employer that I could not apply for one as a spouse (when it was straightforward to do so) and my boss told me he had been given a hard time for offering the job to someone whose DH was born in NI.

Cherry I have been doing al ot of work on our family tree and it is not that hard to trace back to people. If you have your husband's mother's full date of birth you could start by buying her birth certificate (if she does not have her own). That will give her parents' full names. Then you can buy their marriage cert and work back like that. I recently bought my great great grandparents' death certificates (not for passport reasons) from Ireland and they died in 1872 and 1892

You may get called for Jury duty. That's about it

Wow. Lots of posters kicking off about the previous poster's 'relatively poor' comment. In fairness, that is inaccurate these days.

However, the GDP per capita figure is absolute nonsense. It's hugely distorted by the number of US firms that use an Irish office for tax purposes; capital flows through the Country provide some benefit to the treasury, but this has little relation to the obscene sums that flow through the books (and straight into Google etc's bank accounts).

For comparison, take a trip to Anguilla or Turks and Caicos; huge GDP figures artificially inflated by their off-shore status have had little impact on the very real hardships faced by the vast majority of the population.