AIBU to feel miffed about my family getting Irish passports?

[Honeysucklelane]

AIBU to feel miffed my DH & kids are getting Irish passports? They all have UK passports and it seems a luxury to pay twice.

I can’t get an Irish passport, but my DH and DC’s can. I’ve pointed out I’ll be stuck in the long non-EU queues at airports whilst they go ahead through the EU queue.

Realistically unless any of them travel somewhere alone, it’s highly unlikely they’ll be with other family or friends with Irish passports so they’ll always be waiting on whoever they’re travelling with anyway so what is the point?

DH was very sheepish when a neighbour popped round with the signed forms this evening and was avoiding telling me what he’d dropped round for.

I sympathise with the queuing worries, anxiety is not something you can simply switch off and airports can be triggering for some. But you have options there, it sounds like you can go through the EU queue anyway with your family, or they could use their UK passports and go through the non-EU queue with you altogether. Have you spoken to your DH about your queuing worries?

If my kids qualified for an EU passport I’d jump at the chance, I’m still bitter 10 years on that my kids automatic right to study and work in 27 countries was stolen from them. So it is a positive for them overall, even though I understand how the anxiety can shadow that.

From reading your post though, what you really need to be focusing on is why has your DH been applying for passports for your kids without your knowledge? There’s also process to do the paperwork to qualify their birth information and rights, before applying for the Irish passport so this isn’t something he’s just done this week. He’s spent a while
working on something both parents should absolutely be aware is happening.

With the EU automatic gates ,there is always a manned booth where you can check through together. My DH and daughters have German passports. I just stick with them. For some surprises there is a form you can complete that allows you to use the egates. I have not done this yet as happy to stick with DH

I was just coming on to post the same thing.

I travel extensively and rarely come across huge queues. There is usually a reason for them. I went to Lithuania for a football match and we arrived late in the evening. The local customs clearly hadn’t thought through 3-4 plane loads of England fans arriving at a similar time and there weren’t enough staff. We waiting about an hour for 2 people to deal with us all.

Went to Tampa and the US is notorious for queues. Through passport and customs in 10 minutes. Same in Vietnam. Through passport, customs and got my suitcase in the space of 25 minutes.

Yes, sorry. I realised it didn't make sense.

study (cheap fees)

How easy is it to access student finance for accommodation/maintenance in the EU? Pre-Brexit, undergraduate students in England could not apply for funding from Student Finance England if they wished to study for a full degree outside of the UK. Presumably this is one of the reasons why not many UK students started full undergraduate degrees elsewhere in the EU before we left.

Being anxious is not like having a broken arm, understanding of mental health has moved far beyond that old analogy. You owe it to your family to get help to recover from your anxiety, as it has clearly made you very self centred

OP, I get it. I am very anxious about going anywhere on my own and I wouldn't fly solo. There was a stage when I studied in England to do my pgce (& I'm from Northern Ireland)and every journey was a panic/stress. That was a situation when I had to do it but facing my fear didn't help.

Busy places and getting separated from friends and family is a real fear for some people that a lot of people just don't understand. I have no sense of direction, rubbish at following Google maps, if there is a wrong way to go, I will go. I am a nervous driver too. Forced myself to learn and travel where I need too for work etc but if it's somewhere new I need to do a practice run with my DH beforehand. It really does hold me back and I have had CBT for anxiety but it hasn't changed anything other than I'm more aware of my thought process.

I'm glad other posters on here are able to alleviate your worries about you being separated from your family.

Irish passport applications do not have to be signed by a notary. The list of who can sign an Irish passport application is similar to, although shorter than, the UK equivalent list.

The OP's children are not automatically Irish but now that they have become Irish citizens through the Foreign Birth Registration, their children would be eligible.
Under the current rules, this continues as long as the parent was Irish at the time of their child's birth.
It is the FBR that is critical, rather than the passport.

Although it is probably that OP's DH's parents did know he was doing this, it is possible to get the required birth, marriage and death certificates from Ireland without their involvement.

The FBR process also does not necessarily need a notary public to witness the application either.

Is it MH issues? All anxiety seems to be labelled as MH - a lot of it is people not being able to manage some form of stress, pressure or change in circumstances. So it becomes labelled as anxiety.
A degree of anxiety is normal - we need it to function, to anticipate issues and get things done.

Unless you had some traumatic event associated with airport queues then it really is just as PPs say - you have to get on with it and nothing bad will come of you being in a different queue your family. You certainly would be very unreasonable to stop or guilt-trip your DH and DCs for getting an EU passport for this reason, regardless of whether you can join them in the EU passport queue or not.

Like a lot of other countries round the world Ireland doesn’t hand you a passport just because you marry a citizen. You qualify either through descent or naturalisation. Marriage streamlines the naturalisation process a bit, but you still have to live there for a qualifying period.

I will be gently encouraging then to go to uni in Ireland as it's significantly cheaper than the UK

Would you be looking at universities in Dublin? I know a few Irish families who live within an hour of Dublin - all of their dc have lived at home for their degrees as student accommodation in Dublin is very expensive and they didn't qualify for means-tested grants.

My Irish husband and 18-year old daughters have Irish passports, and I am right behind them on that. It presents more opportunities for my daughters after uni, and who wants a crappy British passport now anyway? I have always been waved through and allowed to join them in the EU queue. I am unfortunately not eligible for an Irish passport as I am a British citizen and we live in the UK.

Having anxiety sucks, I have it too but try to rationally talk myself through most things.
Unless your DH and children are thoughtless and awful, which I’m hoping they are not…. I’m sure if you were in a separate queue they would just wait for you at the other side, somewhere visible and you would have phoned with you to ring if you couldn’t locate them.
It sounds like from other posters that you can be in the same queue anyway so that might be worth looking into?
I’d be more concerned that your husband without even mentioning it has got them all Irish passports , surely that would be something he’d mention even in passing
”BTW I’ve ordered the kids their Irish passports as they are entitled to them and will make their lives as adults easier”
Why is he sneakily doing it?!

Don't knock it OP, your children may be very glad of those passports in years to come, with the world the way it is. It's a pain about the passport queues and if you have to go through on your own, make sure you are prepared with strategies for managing it.

Dh may have done it secretly because he knew OP would be upset and was determined to go ahead anyway. It's not great but it needn't mean anything more sinister is going on.

"who wants a crappy British passport anyway?"
Millions of people
Literally.

Well, think harder? For many of us who lived in England in particular for many years, and dealt with anti-Irish prejudice and ignorance on a dismayingly regular basis, in many cases in the run-up and immediate aftermath of Brexit, this would be followed by a request to be congratulated on having ‘discovered’ the Irish granny they were always ashamed of just in time to apply for a passport, so they could both vote for a monumentally stupid thing to ‘close our borders’ and exploit the nationality of an immigrant ancestor for their own gain.

I mean, for obvious post-colonial reasons we take the diaspora seriously, hence Irish citizenship by descent and the foreign births register, but it’s not difficult to understand why it’s galling when eases the sun holidays of someone who thinks Irish people are priest-ridden savages or who asks you to educate them about the Troubles because, hey, you were probably in the IRA, right?

This..

I rather think you've missed the point op.

I mean for me it was anything to do with passport queues and all to do with dcs being able to work in the EU. It was their/our heritage and not “passport shopping” as another poster said. We were born here, my mother was born here. Why not have both. Wouldn’t have needed to if not for Brexit.

Not just Dublin. I teach at a non-Dublin university and quite a few of my students commute up two hours by car or public transport daily, as it’s more affordable than accommodation in the university city.

Although staying at home and going to a local university is far more culturally normal than in the UK.

Yes, I had a gardener who proudly told me he had voted for Brexit (he’s not even British but has a passport after living here for a number of years but doesn’t have a British accent or culture). He was even more proud that he could get an Irish passport so it didn’t affect him. Wanker. He lost the job.

This is about much more than travel. It means that your children in future will be able to work and live freely throughout the EU. That is a HUGE benefit.

At the moment the benefits might seem relative small and possibly not worth it depending on the costs. But before you know it they may be travelling without you. And in some places you will all be able to go through the quicker EU queues together even though you don't have the Irish passport. Oh and quite a few expensive tourist sites in European cities over discounts to young EU citizens.

My DH is an EU citizen and so my kids have EU and UK passports. They are now young adults and consider their EU passports absolutely invaluable. They feel so lucky compared to their friends who don't have them. For example, by daughter spent a year studying abroad as part of her degree and it was so much easier and cheaper for her to arrange and she could work freely while there to support herself.

Maybe you could have waited until the children are a bit older, but in the future they may well be incredibly important to them.

Yes, no one chooses to be anxious, but there are effective treatments available- same as there are for a broken arm. And no, they don’t always work for everyone, and you often need to try a number of different approaches before you find one that does. Of course you may already be actively addressing this - in which case I really hope you find what works for you. However as the child of a very anxious mother it really impacted me, so if you are not I would urge you to do all you can to find a solution for your DC’s sake.

I don’t think it’s particularly sinister just extremely odd given the children are minors and have two parents.
I wouldn’t be very happy about my husband randomly doing something regarding our children without mentioning it and getting another passport issues is certainly out of the ordinary enough to be mentioned.

I've now seen your children are teens, not tiny kids. In that case you are being unreasonable times a million!!!! Do you not appreciate what opportunities this opens up for them??

By the way, they can still all just travel with you on their UK passports and go through the same gates if you prefer that.