Citizenship

A record 30,000 applications for Irish citizenship have been decided in 2024, according to new figures. The number represents a significant increase on the 20,000 decisions made in 2023 and is nearly double the number of decisions made in 2022.

Lawyers for Shamima Begum have said they will launch proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights after exhausting UK appeals against the stripping of her British citizenship. The UK Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear an appeal against a Court of Appeal ruling which held that the revocatio

The High Court is to hear a legal challenge to the requirement to register children born abroad to naturalised Irish parents on a 'foreign birth register' before they are recognised as Irish citizens. The applicant in the case is a naturalised Irish citizen whose child was born outside of Ireland.

Litigation appears to be "inevitable" following Seanad approval of new legislation allowing for the revocation of Irish citizenship, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said. The Court, Civil Law, Criminal Law and Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 will amend the Iris

Plans to give the government new powers to revoke Irish citizenship may not meet the standards of natural justice and should be delayed for further consideration, Ireland's human rights watchdog has said.

Irish citizenship applications can now be submitted online in a significant milestone for the modernisation of immigration services. The Department of Justice's immigration service delivery modernisation programme aims to digitise a number of currently paper-based immigration processes and introduce

The State has spent €4.5 million over the past three years defending citizenship cases which it subsequently lost or settled, according to new figures. A total of 450 court cases brought by citizenship applicants were lost or settled over the period, many of which likely relate to delays in pro

Northern Ireland's High Court has refused leave to apply for judicial review to a man with a deportation order who argued that he had British citizenship as a result of his adoption by a UK/Italian couple despite being born in Italy. The court also found that the deportation order did not impact on

People who have spent a year or more in prison will not be able to obtain British citizenship except in exceptional cases under new UK rules which came into effect yesterday. The Home Office said the new rules — which tighten a previous rule applying to prison sentences of more than four years

Shamima Begum has failed in her appeal over the decision to deprive her of British citizenship because she is a threat to national security. The semi-secret Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) decided today that the revocation of her citizenship in 2019 was lawful.

Nathan Campbell and Laura Gooding of Cleaver Fulton Rankin consider a recent court ruling on nationality. In a previous article, we covered the case of Re Ní Chuinneagain where the High Court did not accept that the conferral of British citizenship on the applicant, who was born in Northern I

Northern Ireland's Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge by a person of both British and Irish citizenship asserting a right to be recognised as an Irish citizen only. The court rejected claims that the British Nationality Act 1981 unlawfully interfered with the appellant's rights under Article

Waiting times for Irish citizenship applications remain high with an average processing time of 22 months, according to new figures. This represents a slight improvement on 2021, when the average processing time was 23 months, but is more than three times the average of seven months five years ago,

Citizenship ceremonies welcoming 950 people as Irish citizens took place in-person today for the first time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Two ceremonies took place at the INEC in Killarney, Co Kerry, presided over by retired High Court judge Mr Justice Bryan McMahon and retired Distri

The Supreme Court has quashed a decision to refuse an Irish passport to a child whose father's refugee status was retrospectively revoked. The case focused on "UM", who was born in Ireland and asserted Irish citizenship on the basis of his Afghan father’s residency in the country, as a refugee