Irish Citizenship Law

scorphonic

Hello everyone,

I've come to drain your brains of some pretty vital information!!

A good friend of mine is a foreign national and has been living in ireland for about 6 years and in another EU country for 2 years (total time in EU is 8 years). My friend is currently living in Ireland at the moment and is just finishing up University Education (and has a student's visa). My friend lives with both parents who own their own house and who have very good jobs.

I have read about attaining Irish Citizenship but of course the law confuses the life out of me and it was a wasted attempt!!

Could any of you be so good as to put in simple english what conditions must be met in order to apply and if its as simple as the government pages make it out to be?

I know that marriage will allow for the attainment of citizenship after 3 years but I sure dont plan to marry for a few years yet so its out of the question (dont want to marry just for that reason alone!!)

Thanks a million for any help!!

PS: If this is ment to be in another forum I'm sorry!

Cork Protestant

As far as I'm aware, if your friend has lived here for 5 or more years he?she can apply for citizenship via naturalisation. It's a rather simple process

oscarBravo

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/moving-country/irish-citizenship/becoming_an_irish_citizen_through_naturalisation

scorphonic

Oh...I'm not happy with what I read on that link!!


It seems that the state do not take into account the time spent in the country if the individual is on a "Student Visa". So effectively my friend has not spent any time in the country that is recognised.

Thats a pain. So there will be yet another 8 years to wait before they can even contemplate applying for citizenship. As much as I respect the law, I think even students should be recognised as having reckonable residency during their stay here since they are integrating into the daily workings of the country...but then again, they are not paying taxes through a full time wage!!

We'll be married anyway before she's able to apply!! Such is life I suppose!!

Thanks for the replies! Much appreciated.

If there is anything else to add, I'm very happy to read it!!

InFront

scorphonic I think your options are quite limited. Your friend won't be considered for naturalisation for quite a while, and there's not much you can do about it unfortunately. Is she a non EEA citizen?

Cork Protestant wrote:

It's a rather simple process

It's an extremely long, unnecessarily drawn-out, repetitive process made worse by the levels of unbelievable incompetance, wastefulness and arrogance on behalf of the naturalisation/ immigration service.

If I hadn't seen how they deal with some applicants first hand, I really don't think I would have believed it.
A significant benefit in having a long wait until naturalisation is completed is that you realize that the civil servants who work in that are in no way representative of Irish society as a whole. If they were, it would probably be the quickest end to immigration you could think of.

scorphonic

No unfortunaltey she's not from an EEA country. I'm not going to worry about it for now, so long as the visa's keep on coming which shouldn't be a major problem...at least that side of things is easy and quick to do!!

Thanks for all the help and knowledge!! I appreciate it