Ireland · Citizenship by descent
Foreign Births Register (citizenship by descent)
Open
Last verified July 2026
Open. All applications are processed centrally in Dublin.
This is the cheapest route to full EU citizenship in existence for anyone with an Irish-born grandparent — a few hundred euro and a year of patience for a top-5 passport, EU free movement, and the right to live in Ireland and access the non-dom remittance basis. For families with Irish ancestry it comfortably outperforms every golden visa in Europe on every metric.
The facts
- Qualifying figure
- €278
- Total landed cost
- Roughly EUR 278 for an adult registration, plus document sourcing and apostilles; a passport application follows separately
- Timeline
- 9–18 months — Officially around 12 months from receipt of complete correct documents; cases needing clarification run longer
- Physical presence
- None whatsoever
- Family
- applies individually — but see the generational trap below, which is the single most important feature of this route
- Permanent residency
- n/a — you are a citizen from the date of registration
- Citizenship
- Immediate on registration
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- a grandparent born on the island of Ireland, or a parent who was an Irish citizen at your birthfor onward transmission: the parent must have been entered on the FBR before the child's birthfull documentary chain of birth and marriage certificates
What can go wrong
- The generational trap is the thing to understand. Citizenship passes down only if the parent was registered on the Foreign Births Register BEFORE the child was born. Register yourself after your children arrive and you have secured your own citizenship and permanently cut theirs off. This catches families constantly and it is irreversible.
- The chain must be documentary and complete — your Irish-born grandparent's birth certificate, your parent's birth and marriage certificates, and yours. Missing or destroyed records can end the claim.
- Great-grandparents do not work unless the intervening parent was themselves registered on the FBR before your birth.
- Citizenship gives you the right to live in Ireland; it does not give you Irish domicile. Those are different concepts and the non-dom analysis is separate — an Irish passport is entirely compatible with non-Irish domicile.
- Processing times have historically ballooned; the ~12-month figure is an estimate, not a service standard.