Ireland Forum

tommacg
Joined 2018
Posts: 2

5 years ago

Naturalisation Query

5 years ago

Hi all. A complex query, but here it goes.

I am a UK citizen who moved to Ireland as a baby. I lived in Ireland
continuously, completed all my schooling and university there - 24 years of continuous residence - before moving abroad to do a PhD from 2014-2017. During this time I unfortunately didn't have access to the €1000 needed to apply for/obtain citizenship.
In August 2018 I took up a job at a university on the continent, where I currently reside.

While I (just) qualify for applying for naturalisation, given I lived in Ireland for 5 of the last 9 years, I fail to qualify for naturalisation due to the stipulation that you must be resident in Ireland for the 365 days prior to making the application. Obviously, it seems fundamentally unjust that someone can live in Ireland all their life, go to school there, speak the language, have family living there, and not have a right to apply for citizenship, while millions of others - many of whom have never set foot in the country - have the right to do so purely on the basis of one of their grandparents. This is, furthermore, a concern for me given the current political situation - my family home is in Ireland but I am not a citizen there.

The minister can waive one of the conditions (the 1 year residency requirement, in this case), given the condition of ‘Association’. Association is defined as "related by blood, affinity, adoption to, or is the civil partner of, a person who is an Irish citizen, or a person who is deceased and who, at the time of his or her death, was an Irish citizen or entitled to be an Irish citizen."

Given this, I am wondering if I show significant associations with Ireland (that I spent 23 of the first 24 years of my life there) and that I have two sisters who are Irish citizens, that this is feasible grounds for waiving one of the conditions of application? (granted that the answer won't be certain and everything remains within the minister's discretion, of course).

William Russell

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