Pulaski

Anyone born in NI can apply for an Irish passport. I am not certain what the rules are for claiming an Irish passport based on parental or grand-parental birth in NI, but I suspect it is also possible.

The reason is, more-or-less, in summary, (and with apologies to those who have personal angles on the history), that a sizeable chunk of the NI population wanted to be part of Ireland, but in practice distinguishing "nationalist" from "loyalist" is impractical, so the Irish government will generally issue a passport to any Northern Irish British citizen who applies for one.

BritInParis

Yes, you can submit all three applications at the same time using the mother's long birth certificate. Just pop them all in the same envelope and then post it to Durham.

You can't do use the same day service for a first time application.

Irish citizenship law refers to the island of Ireland, not the country, so a birth in Belfast is treated the same as a birth in Dublin for the purposes of acquiring an Irish passport. The practical upshot of this is that most people born in Northern Ireland are both British and Irish citizens.

rpjs

Prior to the Good Friday Agreement, the Republic of Ireland claimed Northern Ireland as part of its territory, and in its constitution guaranteed Irish citizenship to anyone born in the island of Ireland (what's known as jus soli, which is also the governing principle of US nationality law). Under the GFA the Republic dropped its territorial claim but it was agreed that the people of Northern Ireland were to be guaranteed the right to be Irish, British or both, so the Republic did not change their constitutional definition of Irish citizenship. The Irish changed their constitution and nationality laws about ten years ago to abolish jus soli; now only people born in Ireland (north or south) who have at least one legally resident or citizen parent or who would otherwise be born stateless get Irish citizenship at birth, which of course accounts for the vast majority of people born in Ireland.

Irish nationality law goes further, and confers automatic citizenship at birth on any children of a person born a citizen of Ireland on the island of Ireland. Anyone else who has a parent who is an Irish citizen at the time of their birth can register as an Irish citizen but is only a citizen from the time that they register.

So in my wife's case, her grandmother was born in what is now Northern Ireland before partition and so was an Irish citizen under the Irish constitution and law from birth. My wife's father, born in the US, was under Irish law an Irish citizen from birth (much to his distaste, when my wife discovered this, as he was very much of the opinion that he was American first, last and only). My wife was therefore able to register as an Irish citizen when she was about twenty and was able to move to the UK to live with, and eventually marry me.

Now we're in the US, and in the unlikely event that we ever have any children, they would be US and UK citizens at birth, and entitled to be registered as Irish citizens. Under current Irish law Irish citizenship can be passed on by descent in this way indefinitely, although each generation needs to make sure they have registered before having children themselves in order to pass on that right.

And Irish law used to be even more liberal - up until the 80s I think it was, anyone married to an Irish citizen for more than a couple of years could themselves register as an Irish citizen, even if they weren't living in, or even had never set foot upon, Ireland. Now if I wanted to claim Irish citizenship through my wife we would have to actually move there to live for a few years. Maybe worth considering if the UK ever leaves the EU.

taffie77

That said, return tickets are often cheaper than one way...