An Irish passport through your grandparents: the Foreign Births Register

Few countries in Europe are as generous to the descendants of their emigrants as Ireland. The law behind it is the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956. Its Sections 7 and 27 set out who is Irish by descent and who can become Irish through registration. How Ireland compares with Italy, Poland or Hungary is covered in the overview of citizenship by descent. For families who plan to move to Ireland anyway, Saol Nua Plan explains Irish citizenship through parents and grandparents.

Who qualifies for Irish citizenship by descent?

There are three ways to be or become Irish through your family. Two of them run through the Foreign Births Register; one needs no application at all.

The island of Ireland includes Northern Ireland. A grandfather from Belfast or Derry counts just as much as a grandmother from Cork. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs refers explicitly to grandparents born "on the island of Ireland".

Just as important is what the register's requirements leave out: no residence in Ireland, no language skills, no investment and no minimum wealth. All that matters is descent, proven by certificates.

An Irish parent: you may already be Irish

Section 7(1) of the Act is simply worded: anyone whose parent was an Irish citizen at the time of their birth is Irish from birth. If that parent was born on the island of Ireland, this applies without any further formality, wherever you were born.

Many people in Germany with an Irish mother or father have no idea they are already Irish. They do not need to apply for anything or register anywhere. The Department of Foreign Affairs puts it this way: in that case you do not need to become Irish, you already are, and you can apply for an Irish passport straight away.

It is different if your Irish parent was born abroad. Then Section 7(3) applies: citizenship does not pass on automatically, only through an entry in the Foreign Births Register. This is exactly where the route through your grandparents begins.

Irish grandparents: the route through the Foreign Births Register

The Foreign Births Register is an official register kept under Section 27 of the Act by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin. Anyone entered in it is an Irish citizen and can apply for an Irish passport.

The typical situation looks like this: your grandfather or grandmother was born on the island of Ireland and emigrated, and your father or mother was already born abroad, for example in England, the United States or Germany. You were also born outside Ireland. In that case, you can apply for registration.

When you become Irish

One point is often overlooked: registration does not work backwards. For every registration after 1 July 1986, Section 7(3) provides that Irish citizenship only begins on the date of registration. So you become Irish on the day your name is entered in the register, not retroactively from your birth.

That sounds like a technicality, but it has a very real consequence for your family, above all for children born before you are registered.

The application in three steps

1. You fill in the application online and pay the fee as you go.
2. You print the form, sign it and have it confirmed by a witness. The same witness signs two of your four photos and certifies the copy of your ID.
3. You post the form, the photos and all original certificates to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The Department recommends registered post with tracking, because it does not confirm receipt. At the end of the process, all your original certificates come back to you by registered post; you do not need to include a stamped return envelope.

The documents you need for the Foreign Births Register

The register requires an unbroken chain of original certificates across three generations: you, your parent and your grandparent born in Ireland. Unless stated otherwise, originals must be submitted. How to track down old records in Germany and abroad is explained in the article on genealogy for your passport.

Your own documents

• the fully completed, signed and witnessed application form
• your original birth certificate, showing your parents' names
• your marriage certificate or other proof if you have changed your name
• a copy of your passport, national identity card or driving licence, certified by the witness
• two separate original proofs of address
• four colour photos, two of them signed by the witness

Your parent's documents

• the original birth certificate, showing the parents' names
• the marriage certificate or other proof of a name change
• a certified copy of an official photo ID or, if your parent has died, the original death certificate

Your grandparent's documents

• the original Irish birth certificate, showing the parents' names
• the marriage certificate or other proof of a name change
• a certified copy of an official photo ID or the original death certificate

The marriage certificates are often the sticking point. If your grandmother changed her name when she married, only her marriage certificate links the maiden name on her Irish birth certificate to the name on your mother's birth certificate. Without that link, the chain is broken.

The witness: who can sign

The application and photos are confirmed by a witness who knows you personally but is not related to you. They must currently be practising their profession, put their official stamp on the form and certify the copy of your ID. If they have no stamp, you enclose their business card.

Suitable witnesses include police officers, teachers and head teachers, members of the clergy, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, lawyers, notaries, bank branch managers, accountants and auditors, elected public representatives, vets and Chartered Engineers. Most people in Germany will find someone in this circle, such as their family doctor or their children's teacher.

Finding your grandparents' Irish birth certificates

Your grandparent's Irish birth certificate is the heart of the application. The good news: Ireland has digitised most of its civil registers.

On irishgenealogy.ie, run under the Irish Department of Culture, you will find birth records from 1864 to 1925, marriage records from 1845 to 1950 and death records from 1871 to 1975. Birth records only appear there once they are more than 100 years old. For the application, though, you need an official certificate, not a screenshot: for births in the Republic, you order it from the Civil Registration Service of the Irish health authority, the HSE.

If your grandparent was born in Northern Ireland, the General Register Office Northern Ireland is responsible. Through GRONI online you search historical records and, once you have the details, order the official certificate online and pay by card.

Your parent's certificates and your own, by contrast, usually come from the German civil registry office (Standesamt) or from the country where your parent was born. Make sure every birth certificate names the parents. A short-form certificate without the parents' details is not enough.

What does registration cost and how long does it take?

The Foreign Births Register fees are modest, measured against what you get for them: a citizenship you can pass on to your children.

The €8 for postage and handling is not refundable. You pay online when you fill in the application. On top come the costs of certificates, copies, photos, registered post and, later, the fee for the Irish passport itself.

More than money, the register asks for patience. The Department of Foreign Affairs works through applications strictly by date of receipt and currently quotes around twelve months for a complete application. If anything is missing, the whole application comes back unprocessed and you have to apply again. So only send it off once every certificate is in hand. A typical timeline looks like this:

The full process of getting a second passport, from the first check to the document in your hand, is set out on the process page.

The deadline that affects your children

This is the point families most often realise too late. Because you only become Irish on the day of registration, a child born before then cannot derive a claim through you. The Department of Foreign Affairs leaves no room for doubt: if a parent-to-be is not in the Foreign Births Register when the child is born, the child has no entitlement to Irish citizenship.

The flip side: every child born after your registration is the child of an Irish citizen and can in turn be entered in the register. With your registration, you open the door not just for yourself but for the next generation. The line carries on as long as each generation registers before the next one is born.

What this means for your planning

• If you are planning children, apply now, not once a baby is on the way. With around twelve months of processing, every month counts.
• If you are already expecting, say so clearly on the application. If the birth looks likely to come before processing is finished, you can contact the register's customer service by phone or webchat.
• If your children are already born, they cannot register through you. For them, naturalisation remains, where Section 16 allows Ireland to make allowances for minors of Irish descent.

What two passports mean for children is shown on the family page. Saol Nua Plan explains the other ways children become Irish, such as birth in Ireland, in its guide to Irish citizenship for your children.

Irish and German passports: dual citizenship

For Germans, the position has never been clearer. On 27 June 2024, the Act to Modernise Nationality Law (Gesetz zur Modernisierung des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts) came into force. Since then, acquiring another nationality on application no longer means losing German citizenship. The procedure for a retention permit (Beibehaltungsgenehmigung) has been abolished, and the former ground for loss in section 25 of the German Nationality Act (Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG) has been repealed.

Ireland sets no condition either. Under Irish law, you do not have to give up any other nationality to claim Irish citizenship by birth, descent or on any other basis. So you hold both passports side by side, without having to choose. The full framework for Germans with a second passport is explained in the article on dual citizenship in Germany.

For Austrians and Swiss, their home country's own rules apply. What an Irish passport means for your existing citizenship in all three countries is summed up by Saol Nua Plan in its guide to dual citizenship with Ireland.

What an Irish passport gives you as a second passport

For Germans, a second passport from another EU country sounds at first like little added value. You already have freedom of movement in Europe. But the Irish passport can do what the German one cannot.

Britain without permission

The biggest advantage lies across the Irish Sea. Under Section 3ZA of the UK's Immigration Act 1971, an Irish citizen needs no permission to enter or stay in the United Kingdom. Since Brexit, that is a privilege no other EU passport offers Germans: you can live and work in London without a visa, without the points system and without a fee. The rights the Common Travel Area gives you in practice are explained by Saol Nua Plan in its guide to the Common Travel Area.

A second state that protects you

A passport is a right, not a permission. A visa can be refused or revoked; citizenship cannot. With an Irish passport, you have a second state that recognises you as its citizen, gives you consular protection and guarantees your return to its territory at any time. If one passport is lost, stolen or tied up in a visa application abroad, you travel on the other. The eight reasons why a second passport belongs in a solid Plan B are on the page why a second passport.

A legacy for your family

An Irish passport through your grandparents is a citizenship that runs on through the generations, as long as each generation registers in time. For your children, it may be the most valuable passport you ever leave them.

No claim by descent: naturalisation or investment

Not every Irish family story is enough for the register. If the Irish woman in your family was your great-grandmother and your parent was not registered before you were born, the line ends there. That leaves you two other routes.

The first is naturalisation in Ireland. It requires no investment, but it does require years of genuine residence on the island. For applicants "of Irish descent or Irish associations", Section 16 also allows the Minister to waive naturalisation conditions at their absolute discretion. There is no entitlement to this. Everything on timelines, fees and the process is in the article on naturalisation in Ireland.

The second route is citizenship by investment. It is open to you within a few months, regardless of your ancestry and without moving. The two do not rule each other out: naturalisation is the free route and often the better one in the long run, while an investment buys you time until then. Why you should pursue both is explained in the article on CBI and naturalisation. Which programmes are open today and how they differ is shown in the programme overview and the comparison.

If, on the other hand, you have a grandparent from the island of Ireland, the Foreign Births Register is one of the cheapest routes to a second EU passport. Start with the certificates while the people who can tell you which village Grandad Patrick was really born in are still alive.

Frequently asked questions