Nearly a quarter of a million people living in the UK applied for an Irish passport, the highest level of such applications since Brexit.
Figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs show that 242,772 people applied for an Irish passport in 2024, and more than half the applications were from people in Northern Ireland.
The data also shows that the number of people living in Britain who applied via the Foreign Births Register reached 23,456 last year, the highest number since the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Applying through the Foreign Births Register allows people living in Britain who were not born in Ireland but have an Irish parent or grandparent to apply for an Irish passport. In 2015, the year prior to the vote, the total was just 873.
The number of Irish passport applications from people in the UK peaked in 2019 at 244,976, including half (49%) from people in the North, but there was a drop-off in applications in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
UK applications for Irish passports have reached a post-Brexit high. (Pic: PAUL FAITH/AFP via Getty Images)
Carol Sinnott, of Sinnott Solicitors and chair of the Irish Immigration Lawyers Association, told RTÉ she had noticed a trend of “future planning” recently.
“A lot of people in the UK that would be entitled to apply for an Irish passport, perhaps they might be in their 20s or 30s and they haven’t yet had children but if they intend to have a family they apply for their passport before they have children because they want to ensure that their children will also be citizens of the European Union,” she said.
(Pic: Getty Images)