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?

You may get called for Jury duty.

Only if you're on the register of electors.

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).

That's true, which is why GNI (formerly GNP) per capita rather than GDP is regarded as a better way to assess income of a country's population. GNI excludes the billions in revenue from Google, Apple, etc. that count towards GDP but flow out of the country immediately.

Ireland ranks #9 in the world for GNI per capita (61,910 dollars) whereas the UK ranks #25 (42,560 dollars). They're the 2017 figuress* but the gap has been there for several years.

A better index (imo) is the % of the population living below the poverty line. Most recent figures are from 20133*, where Ireland had 8.2% in poverty (still too much) but the UK had 15%... I was shocked by that, tbh.

Enough digression, but worth noting that the jingoistic claptrap of Ireland being a poor relation of the UK doesn't hold water regardless of how many times it comes up on MN 🙄

Sorry about weird bolding and duplicate letters - keeps happening when I put in clicky links on the app.

Thanks MarDhea - it’s interesting to see statistics like that. The attitude of Ireland being an under developed poorer country comes from an old comparison when Ireland wasn’t the progressive thinking place it is now. Then maybe the comparison could be argued to be poor from Irelands viewpoint. However, those days have gone and Ireland should no longer be realistically be seen that way - as you showed. Thanks!

I know that I am responding to an old thread, but I would just like to clarify one point. There is a fundamental difference between applying for an Irish passport and Irish citizenship, and this goes for just about any country; not just Ireland. Passports are only issued to citizens. Therefore, under Irish law, anyone with a parent or grandparent born on the island of Ireland IS ALREADY AN IRISH CITIZEN, and therefore entitled to an Irish passport. In my case, my father was born in the United States, but his parents were born in Ireland. Both my mother and I were born in the UK, so I have triple citizenship, being British, Irish and US.

To answer the original poster, there is absolutely no disadvantage to applying for an Irish passport if one's mum was born in Northern Ireland, as the applicant is already an Irish citizen and therefore entitled to an Irish passport.

I had three Irish grandparents, but never lived there so haven't applied.

Why not? I haven't either but I am entitled to it (also three gps born on the island of Ireland, two in in the Republic, as well as a mother born in Belfast). I have no intention of living there but after Brexit it was better for me to continue living in Spain as an Irish passport holder so that's why I got it.