I am not sure this belongs here and may end up being moved. However, the depth and breadth of members knowledge always impresses me, so maybe I can find someone who has been through this process and can shed some light on it.

I have a UK passport. I also had Irish born grandparents (3 out of 4) and that, apparently, entitles me to Irish citizenship and a passport. One Irish born grandparent is enough so my application will concentrate on my maternal grandmother.

The process is through Foreign Births Registration of both myself and of my late mother, both born in the UK. Once both our births have been registered I am then considered an Irish citizen. I can then apply for a passport. Sounds simple right?

The process involves getting copy birth/marriage/death certificates for my maternal grandmother and my mother. These have been located and copies ordered. So far, so good and not as hard as it sounds. This would have been a major task before the internet.

The next step is to send all of these, plus lots of info about me - birth cert. certified copy passport, two proofs of address etc, witnessed application form, certified photos etc etc, and send the whole bundle off to the Irish Embassy in Hanoi. Plus the 288 Euro fee.

Has any member been through this process or have any knowledge of how simple or difficult it is, once the application has been lodged?

So far it seems simple but I suspect this will change once I get into the system of verification. Covid-19 has stuck a spanner in Irish government activities like this but I want to get my place in the queue, which they asses will take 12-18 months, which seems a very long time.

If anyone has any information or experience I would be very interested to hear about it. PM me if you want privacy.

And if anyone else out there has/had an Irish born grandparent and fancies a spare EU passport, watch this space...

Have a nice day everyone...

atst wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:32 pm What's the advantage of an Irish passport?

You can travel freely to/ live in the EU without the restrictions that are on British passports now.

Dunderhead wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 2:19 pm I have gone through the process, for my daughter using her grandmother who is my mother. I got Irish passport about 20 years ago through my mother because my mother was born in Ireland. When I applied 2years ago for my daughter to get foreign birth registration based on her grandmother, it stated that a grandchild was only eligible if the father (thats me) or the mother already had Irish citizenship BEFORE the grandchild was born.
Anyway at the moment they have shutdown all processing of passports and registration of birth. They say they can't get data from their system because of Covid, No I am not kidding.


Gr

Thanks for your reply.

As far as I understand their website and other enquiries, the moment you were born to an Irish Citizen (your mother being born in Ireland), you were, at birth, also an Irish citizen. So your daughter's father (you) was already a citizen at her birth.
If that is incorrect, it means my mother would have needed to be registered as a foreign birth between 1934 - her birthyear - and 1967 - the year of my birth. And nobody bothered with crap like that back in those days.

Did you manage to get your daughter an Irish Passport?

This is an extract from their website:

You are automatically an Irish citizen if one of your parents was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, and was born on the island of Ireland. You don't need to apply to become an Irish citizen in this case.
[This ^^^^ is you]

If you were born outside of Ireland, you can become an Irish citizen if:

One of your grandparents was born in Ireland, or; [This is me]
One of your parents was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, even though they were not born in Ireland. [This is me too]

In these cases, you can become an Irish citizen through Foreign Birth Registration.

Once a person is entered onto the Foreign Births Register they are an Irish citizen and entitled to apply for an Irish passport.

I think I qualify on both counts.

I also read that they are not processing applications at the moment, but my plan is to get all my paperwork in order and lodge it with the Embassy in Hanoi, get an application number and secure a place in the queue.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:48 pm

atst wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:32 pm What's the advantage of an Irish passport?

You can travel freely to/ live in the EU without the restrictions that are on British passports now.

And what those restrictions will be in the future is anyone's guess. Those Brits currently in residence in Europe might be treated fairly, as will EU citizens currently in the UK. However, new British arrivals into the EU, post Brexit, may well be subject to ever increasing restrictions.