Edit : meant immigrant, not expat. I thought they meant the same thing. Apologies.
When people from outside the EU come to Ireland, they’ve to register to get an “Irish residence permit”. This has to be then renewed every year and costs 300 euros per year every year starting from day 1 in Ireland.
For this price, the service people get is utterly slow.
It takes more than 2 whole months for this permit to be issues/renewed effectively putting expats at a state of a travel ban during that time. What is worse is the permits are backdated to the date of application, so people paying 300 euros for 12 months can only effectively only use it for 10 months.
This year the delays got so bad that the govt basically said people can travel with expired permits.
[https://www.irishimmigration.ie/isd-announces-initiative-to-facilitate-customers-travelling-at-christmas/](https://www.irishimmigration.ie/isd-announces-initiative-to-facilitate-customers-travelling-at-christmas/)
This is utter chaos because not all airports in the world and airline staff understand these circulars and it’s often the passengers who have the hassle of explaining everything, especially at smaller airports.
All of this makes me wonder, why is this whole process such a mess? All they have to do is essentially verify their records, print a new card and send it by post.
Am I wrong in thinking 300 euros per person per year is surely enough money to do this way more efficiently?
9 comments
Brits don’t need a permit to live in Ireland. Are you talking about immigrants?
Expat? Don’t you mean immigrant?
You mean immigrant, right?
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Expat is just what the British call themselves, so that they don’t have to call themselves immigrants.
Don’t worry when your Irish and return here from overseas it’s a heap of disorganized chaos too ! Fun !!
Welcome to Ireland. Some people would say that’s it’s charm. I did it the ole fashioned way and just married an Irish person. Your doing it all wrong.
Good thing I already have the citizenship if I ever decide to move to Ireland
Because all bureaucracy in Ireland is a mess. Not just immigration services
Too much demand and not enough staff to cope with it, essentially. Things were getting worse and worse even before 2020, but like everything else, Covid really fucked it all up permanently. The only saving grace in my case was that I wasn’t in Dublin and never had to deal with the horror show that was the Burgh Quay office, but even so the actual renewal process at my local office became more and more of a pain every renewal.
Just take comfort in the fact that you only have to deal with it for several more years before you can become a citizen, and then it won’t be an issue anymore!
Ireland loves bureaucracy. Part of it is that the Free State inherited a colonial civil service and essentially kept it as it was. This may explain the jobsworth type attitudes of many public sector administration types and the rules that they enforce.