Question for Canadians living\working in Ireland

SeanoChuinn

Hello all,

Just a quick question. Myself and my Canadian wife are thinking of heading home in a few months for good, we've spoken to the Irish embassy and the lady we spoke to (twice) said all we'll need to do is turn up with her birth cert, passport and our marriage license at a local Garda station and she'll be given a temporary work visa and allowed to work for a sigle year, renew at hte end of that year, then after two year time frame she'll need to apply for something more permanent.

Now I've checked out the Government Immigration site and it seems to be a completely different story with her needing a work visa application, which could take 12 months, before she can do ANY work. So we are unsure what exactly we need.

Any Canadian ex-pats who've made this move and know what the ACTUAL facts are?

Thanks

Mrs OBumble

What's your citizenship status? I think that plus your marriage cert are likely to be key facts here.

SeanoChuinn

Apologies, I should have put that information in there. I'm an Irish citizen, she is a Canadian citizen. We actually have an Irish marriage certificate as we were married in Ireland.

JFBird

I literally JUST went through all of this. You will get many different responses to this question looking online and I went nearly mad. So. It turns out the Irish constitution has the rights of the family enshrined in it which means your wife can come work here if you are married. The easiest way would be to say nothing when entering the country then go to the police station as you described. They will take her photo and give her a level 4 residency card which is renewable yearly but meanwhile she can come and go and work. Just be careful as to the date you do it on because you'll have to be in Ireland on that date every year for the next three years, then you can look at citizenship or get longer between renewals..

If you are married I promise it will be no problem at all. I am Canadian and my partner is Irish. We live in Ireland.

JFBird

And get her name on an electric bill right away so she can get a bank account :P that was harder than getting residency!

any questions feel free to message me or whatever, I went totally mad trying to figure all of this out and I'm happy to help.