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🇮🇪 Irish Citizenship by Descent: The Foreign Births Register

The Irish pathway is highly appealing due to its clear rules and lack of a language test. It is typically available to applicants with a grandparent born in Ireland.

Key Eligibility Rules

  • Grandparent Rule: You can claim citizenship if one of your grandparents was born on the island of Ireland (including Northern Ireland, if born before 1922, or if their birth was registered under the relevant Irish legislation).
  • Parent Rule: If your parent was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, you are already an Irish citizen, and you simply need to apply for an Irish passport.
  • Registration is Mandatory: If you qualify through a grandparent, you must be successfully entered into the Foreign Births Register (FBR). You are not a citizen until this registration is complete.
  • Generational Limit: The FBR allows citizenship to be passed from an Irish citizen to their child, regardless of where the child is born. Once you are registered, your future children can then register through the FBR (if you register them before they turn 18), extending the line of descent.

Required Documents and First Steps

The process is essentially a rigorous exercise in genealogy and document collection.

  1. Identify the Irish-Born Ancestor: Obtain the full birth certificate of your Irish-born grandparent.
  2. Establish the Link: Obtain the full marriage and birth certificates to prove the chain of relationship from the grandparent to your parent, and then from your parent to you.
  3. Authentication: All non-Irish government documents (US birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc.) must typically be original, official copies issued by the relevant government authority, and sometimes need to be apostilled (certified for international use).
  4. Application: Complete the application and pay the required fee (currently around $\text{\textgreek{\euro}}278$ for an adult). Applications are submitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFA).