Applications for Irish passports from the UK have topped 20,000 per month since January, with indications suggesting demand this year could surpass the previous record.
As the post-Brexit drive for citizenship continues apace, with the Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando Bloom among the latest to fill out the forms, Department of Foreign Affairs figures reveal that almost 82,000 people based in Britain and 87,500 in Northern Ireland have applied so far this year.
The figures, described as “extraordinary” by a leading immigration lawyer, reveal more than a doubling of annual applications since pre-Brexit times in line with the aim of many British citizens to secure “backdoor” access to EU citizenship.
It is believed that key to that is a desire by many parents to ensure their children have the future option to live and work across the continent.
In 2007 87,000 applications were made from the UK, with applications rising to 100,000 in 2015.
Yet in 2016, when the Brexit referendum took place, figures jumped to 131,000 and that upward trend has continued despite dropping to pre-Brexit levels during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
In 2022 a record number of applications were received from Northern Ireland, closing in on 129,000.
The record to date in terms of applications from mainland Britain was set in 2019 when 124,000 applied, with the UK officially leaving the EU in January 2020.
Bloom has told how he got over the line thanks to a grandfather from Belfast. The 48-year-old, who plays a retired Irish boxer in the new thriller The Cut, told Ryan Tubridy on UK Virgin Radio that his application was for both professional and personal reasons.
He said: “Part of it was actually just for work, like, when I was working in Prague for a while, [there was] a bunch of new paperwork. And also, I love the fact that I’ve got Irish heritage.”
Bloom joins the British comics Jimmy Carr and Steve Coogan and the actors Mischa Barton and Dominic Monaghan who have all embraced their Irish identity.
The immigration lawyer Carol Sinnott, of Sinnott Solicitors Dublin and Cork, joked that the “extraordinary numbers” of applicants suggest the UK may soon “run out of Irish grannies".
She said that a key benefit to Irish citizenship was that while a British citizen “can go to any EU country without a visa, they could only stay there for a period of 90 days normally. With the Irish passport, they can live and work in any EU country.
“I think a lot of people now understand that if they get an Irish passport their citizenship can continue down the line and they can give it to their children.
“But you must have the passport before your child is born, so people are thinking of the future. They are thinking that their children may want to go and study in universities in Europe without the restrictions that the UK kids would have.
“So the Irish passport gives not just this generation an amazing freedom, but the next generation too.”
While the impact of EU travel, work and property restrictions on British citizens is central to the applications, observers suggest a poor UK economic outlook and uncertainty around tax rises are also playing a part.
In January, Spain unveiled plans for a 100 per cent “super tax” on non-EU citizens investing in property as a way to improve housing affordability. Last year Spain also shut its “golden visa” scheme. That decision on the residency route for wealthy non-EU investors was in line with a move taken in Portugal and Ireland.
The coveted Irish passport permits dual nationality. It is routinely placed among the top seven most powerful in the world, ranking third last year in the Henley Passport Index due to visa-free access to 192 destinations.
Many UK applicants engage in the process via the Foreign Births Register where they can declare they have Irish parents or grandparents, often leading to them securing the green light. Latest figures show that applications to the register last year rose by 15 per cent to 23,456, the highest figure since digital records began in 2013.
Estimates suggest that at least six million people in the UK have at least one Irish grandparent.
Jason Johnson – The Irish Times
