Foreign birth reg - asked to confirm address but no sign of certificate

[Vickythevan63]

My adult DC both applied to be registered on FBR last November.

In September they both got emails, asking them to confirm their address, as

your application for entry into the Foreign Births Register will be approved shortly and a Foreign Birth Registration Certificate and your original documents will be returned to you

The emails went on to say

Please note that a further email will issue to you when your FBR certificate has been printed and is ready for dispatch

They responded immediately (we used the family email so I know the responses were sent). It is now almost a month since they got that email, and we have heard nothing more.

Has anyone else gone through the FBR application recently and had a similar email. If so, how long then to dispatch of the certificate. I took ‘shortly’ to mean a week, maybe 2, not a month!!

I can find a number to call for urgent applications, but not sure if they would help with chasing up applications.

I did this for my young kids, and it took ages - there is a huge backlog, thanks to Brexit.
I did find them extremely helpful when I called however so I'd give them a bell m

No idea re the answer to your question, but I'm very interested in the timescales as I applied in July. So 10 months till you've even got this far.

The website says it is taking 9 months, so we are past that!

@Spookymormonhelldream

can I ask what number you called please? The website only gives number for “urgent FBR applications”

Gosh I can't remember, honestly I'd call the urgent number. I get the feeling they're all sitting in the same room tbh 😂

Yes I suspect they are sat together too!

I will get one of the DC to send an email first, the ‘address’ emails were both from the same named person, so hopefully he will respond to a follow up email asking how much longer.

If no reply, we will call.

I just wondered if anyone on MN could say, oh yes, we had the address email, then certificate a month later, 6wks etc.

As I said in my first post, I thought it would be a week or 2. Maybe I am too optimistic.

It's taking a massive amount of time. It's mainly because they shut down the FBR during Covid for about 2 years (they shut down the passport office for some of that time too) and redeployed the staff elsewhere when things started to open up again due to the situation in Ukraine and needing staff to process a massive amount of people for benefits etc asap.

In the UK people panic-applied for Irish FBR in fear of Brexit which made the line a lot longer than usual.

At the same time every bored Tom Dick and Hank in America and elsewhere with time and money on their hands during the lockdowns decided that would be a fine time to "reconnect with their roots" and apply for FBR in the hope of getting an Irish passport, which added to the backlog massively, too.

Listen it took over 18 months to get my Child Benefit sorted out in Ireland (by which time we were leaving), the FBR is really low on their priority for a functioning civil service right now and I'd imagine you'll be waiting a while longer as no one seems to take it seriously that this stuff needs to work and they keep redeploying people.

If you want to get it sorted, I'd suggest raising it with a decent politician but there's no financial incentive for them to prioritise it because 90% of this surge of applicants have no intention of living and working in Ireland (or even visiting) i.e. contributing to the economy.

The urgent line is mainly for pregnant women in the situation where they'll lose their Irish citizenship for their unborn baby if the baby is born before the mother's FBR is processed. Please please please don't clog up this line with non-urgent queries and just wait your turn.

@SisterMichaelsHabit

I am aware it is taking a long time, it was 2yrs wait when my DC applied. We were happy to wait that long.

However, when my DC get an email asking for address confirmation, and saying that the application will be approved and certificate sent shortly, then I don’t expect shortly to refer to another few months.

What is the point of them asking for address confirmation if the certificate is not almost ready to send? Plus the wait time is now showing as 9mths, yet we are coming up to a year.

I did it for my dc about 12 years ago and they lost all our documents: my mother's original birth certificate and marriage certificate, one of the dc's birth certificate. We did get the FBR certificates (sent separately), but nothing that we'd sent in as proof. They've never come back.

It was a few weeks for us between address confirmation and receiving certificate OP

@Changeditforyou

Thank you, that was the info I was after. I was starting to wonder if there was a specific problem with my DC applications, or is it normally a few weeks. I will give them some more time!

@Fink

Whilst I hope we get the supporting docs back, it is not a problem if not. I ordered extras specifically for this application (including 2 of my dads birth certificate, expecting they needed one per application but we were able to send just one copy), but I would like to receive the FBR certs that we have applied for and that they are entitled to.

Hi OP, I called the FBR Customer Service Hub number on this webpage. It says for urgent enquiries but I'd emailed the person dealing with my DD's case twice in 5 months for an update with no response.

Someone answered right away, just confirmed the case was being dealt with and the date documents had been received by post. I had the 'congrats/please confirm address to send certificate' email a few days later. Not sure if it did anything to bump her case or not but the paperwork/original docs are back with us now within 2 weeks of making the call. We applied in January 2021 so the whole thing took 2 years 9 months. The backlog is absolutely crazy with since Brexit and the pandemic. Good luck!

Hi,

Just thought I would update my thread in case it helps others.

Before I got chance to call the helpline, a lady called our home phone in mid November, asking for my son, and querying the address confirmation.

He was away but I told the lady we had done the confirmation in September, she said that she couldn’t find any trace of our email.

She sent us the link again, which was a generic email (fbrentitlement processing…) - I realised that the email we received in September came from a named member of staff, and we could only respond to him.

Presumably he forgot to include a link to the generic email address and thus our original address confirmations are sat in his personal inbox.

Anyway, we sent on the September emails (for both son and daughter) to the generic email address. Two wks later, the emails confirming the certificates came through, and the certificates arrived on Friday, a week later.

All told, it was just over a year from posting the applications to receiving the certificates.