Major surge in UK applications for Irish passports in wake of Brexit
Applications for Irish passports among Britons have surged by 70% in wake of Brexit, according to Independent.
The “dramatic” rise was partly caused by people exploiting their familial links to the country in order to continue to enjoy EU membership benefits, according to Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the UK.
“The increase this year, the first few months of this year, over last year is up 70 per cent, that’s the demand for Irish passports from people based in Britain,” he said. “Also of course people applying for Irish citizenship through a grandparent, that’s gone up quite dramatically.”
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Around 70,000 Irish passports were issued in 2016, compared to 50,000 in previous years, according to Mulhall. “We’ve seen significant percentage increases, the overall numbers are still not dramatic,” Mr Mulhall told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The increasing demand for Irish passports is so great that extra staff was needed to deal with applications. It is “reasonable to assume that there are large numbers of people of Irish descent who now feel that they would like to remain as EU citizens in what is a changing time in relations between Ireland and the UK”, according to Charlie Flanagan, Ireland’s foreign minister.
Meanwhile, the number of applications for British citizenship from people living in the EU has also increased since the Brexit vote. Over 13,000 people living somewhere else in the EU applied for a British passport in 2016, according to Financial Times.
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