The Immigration Service Delivery have announced that persons applying for Irish citizenship will no longer be required to submit a full certified copy of their current and previous passports in support of their application.
From the 20th of April, persons applying for Irish citizenship are required to submit a certified copy of the biodata page of their current passport only. This is a welcome development as it substantially reduces the costs and administrative burden associated with the certification of every page of an applicant’s passport, which in some cases has resulted in 100s of pages of passports being certified where persons have held multiple passports.
The Immigration Service Delivery has advised that it retains the right to request original passports for verification purposes and estimates that approximately 10% of applications may be requested to submit original passports. The notice states that the decision to request an individual passport will be based on information available at the time of the processing of a person’s application, including security features or more robust data rules attaching to various passports during the course of their residency.
The full notice can be read on the Immigration Service Delivery Website here.
As the time of writing, the latest version of the Form 8 required for application submission is the Version 6.9 Feb 23, however applicants should check prior to submitting their applications that a newer version has not been released to reflect the passport certification changes. If an application for Irish citizenship is not submitted with the most recent version of the Form 8 application form, it will not be accepted for processing. The ISD do not issue notices when a new form is released so applicant’s should always check the citizenship website prior to submitting their application to ensure that they are submitting the correct version of the application form.
With offices in Dublin and Cork, Sinnott Solicitors have a specialist team of Immigration Solicitors and Immigration Consultants who are experts on Irish citizenship and all Irish immigration matters. Should you have any queries with respect to any of the information contained in this article or any other immigration matters, do not hesitate to contact our immigration department in Cork or Dublin today on 014062862 or info@sinnott.ie.
