Naomi O’Leary:
Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
Tim McInerney:
Let’s do it.
Naomi O’Leary:
Welcome to the Irish Passport.
Tim McInerney:
I’m Tim McInerney.
Naomi O’Leary:
I’m Naomi O’Leary.
Tim McInerney:
We’re friends. Cé he bhfuil tú Naomi?
Naomi O’Leary:
Go hana mhaith ar fad, Tim. This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics. I’m recording. 1 2 3. OK. Hello and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast. Today we are looking at the phenomenon of the huge rise in Irish passport applications, which actually were up 70 percent last year, and they’ve kept up that increased rate ever since.
Tim McInerney:
Yes, the rise began right after the UK’s recent vote to leave the EU. And it has mostly come from UK citizens, about half from Britain and about half from Northern Ireland. People in Northern Ireland, of course, have the same rights to Irish citizenship as people in the Republic. They can have both Irish and UK citizenship if they like.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And of course, the people who apply from Britain are somewhat different so they can apply through descent. That means due to an Irish parent to a grandparent.
Tim McInerney:
So we’re examining the questions, why are people applying and what are the reasons for the policy of allowing people to apply through descent in the first place?
Naomi O’Leary:
We’ll be speaking to applicants about their motivations for doing so and to Irish people about how do you feel about this big rise in people claiming Irish citizenship and passports. What does it mean for the country?
Tim McInerney:
We spoke to the Irish ambassador who had to handle the sudden massive increase as it started right after the Brexit vote. And it hasn’t let up yet. They couldn’t order in boxes of passport forms fast enough, apparently.
Naomi O’Leary:
All right. Let’s hear from the outgoing Irish ambassador in London, Dan Mulhall.
Dan Mulhall:
Immediately after the referendum last year, we were inundated with requests for passport application forms. We had many, many tens of thousands of requests for forms, in some cases for multiple forms. And we had to send them out. We estimate we may have sent out a 100,000 passport forms in the space of, say, a few weeks after the referendum last year.And also all of the Irish centres in Britain, we had trouble keeping their centres stocked. Most days I would see a consignment of passport forms coming in from Dublin that I would see a large bag of mail going out with passport forms was being sent all over Britain. So that was a huge challenge.
Naomi O’Leary:
And what’s your understanding of what’s behind this rise?
Dan Mulhall:
Well, you can only draw one conclusion, because for the last few years, demand for Irish passports in Britain was pretty flat, which suggests the population had levelled out, and then last year, the first half of the year, the demand was more or less what it had been the previous year and then the second half of the year after the referendum, was shot up. So there’s only one answer to that question, which is that Brexit made a material difference. Now I suspect that people were motivated by two considerations. The first being practical. One, the people who felt they might want to study or work or just, you know, move to other European countries and wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be inconvenienced by Britain leaving the EU. And then the second group, probably a much smaller group but nonetheless less significant, will be people who simply wanted to make a statement that I’m European, that the way I can do that is by sort of taking an Irish passport and you know, demonstrating in that way a European identity.
Naomi O’Leary:
I see. So, you think it’s more about a European identity than an Irish identity per say?
Dan Mulhall:
Well, I mean, look, these are people who maybe in the past didn’t seek to have Irish passports and they seek to have them now. That suggests that they see their Irish identity as part of a wider European identity. So I’m not saying that they don’t value an Irish identity, and maybe many of these people may be people who had been thinking for some years perhaps about getting an Irish passport but never got around to it. You know, these are children, grandchildren of Irish citizens that say who may say, who may have said over the years, “yeah I’d like to get an Irish passport. It’d be great” and just never did it. And then were, when the, you know, the Brexit referendum occurred, they thought, “Oh, I’m going to do it now.” It wasn’t necessarily the only factor for people, but I think it was maybe the factor that explains why it happened last year.
Naomi O’Leary:
And what does it mean for Ireland to have this new expansion of its diaspora, I suppose, those with passports?
Dan Mulhall:
Well I think these are people, some of the people that I spoke to said, “Oh, I’m going to go to Ireland this summer now that I have an Irish passport.” So there may be some benefits for our tourism. There may be some benefit for Ireland’s standing and profile here in Britain. But I don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference because Irishness in Britain is much bigger than that.
Naomi O’Leary:
And what’s your understanding of why this policy is in place that people can claims these passports through descent?
Dan Mulhall:
Well this is the law, and has been our practice since independence. And it’s not unusual, by the way, I mean, many countries have laws that require that allow people to claim passports from grandparents. Obviously, not every country has it. Some countries are much more restrictive. But it’s not that unusual, I don’t believe. But I suppose in our case, it reflects the fact that when the state was formed in 1922, we were a nation that had seen generations of quite substantial emigration. Remember, when the state was formed, it was only less than 80 years since the Great Famine. And the huge surge in emigration that occurred in the 1850s and 60s following the famine. You know, there were a lot of people at that time who could still remember the massive emigration and those decades and the fact that emigration continued throughout the late 19th century, and therefore we were very conscious when we became independent of our links with the diaspora. And one practical way of keeping the diaspora connected with Ireland, was by allowing them to acquire Irish passports and allowing their descendants to perhaps come back to Ireland at some stage.
Naomi O’Leary:
Did you know, Tim, that according to the Irish Times, the single busiest day in the Irish embassy’s passport office in London was March 28. So that was the day before Theresa May triggered Article 50? Yeah. And the same month, the demand for Irish passports from people with Irish heritage in the UK rose by 94 percent.
Tim McInerney:
Wow. That is amazing.
Naomi O’Leary:
I know. I know. So a lot of people that I spoke to from the U.K. said they were doing it because they wanted to keep their EU citizenship and the rights that come with it. I mean, part of the issue is that it’s all up in the air and nobody actually knows what effect Brexit will have on that. I think it’s important to stress that it’s not the only motivation for many people. There for some people, that Brexit event was a reminder of something that they had been planning to do for a long time. And for others, it is a question of identity in that they wanted to get Irish citizenship because they didn’t feel British exclusively. They felt a mix. Or they felt European or they felt in some way Irish. And the advent of this shock result of the referendum kicked up a process to explore that side of themselves and that heritage.
Tim McInerney:
Right. Sure. And, you know, the figures are pretty stark, right. Like so far in 2017 from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there have been 84,000 applications for passports and we’re only halfway through 2017. Now it doesn’t sound very much 84,000 but for Ireland that’s actually loads. To put it in perspective that would be the fourth biggest city in the country if all those people came together and lived in one place.
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh, my God. I think, yeah, that’s just bigger than Galway.
Tim McInerney:
Sure. And more striking still though than that, the BBC tried to calculate how many people in total in the U.K. are eligible for an Irish passport who haven’t got one already. There’s already 1.3 million people in Northern Ireland, off the bat, who are eligible but when you add in an estimate of those of Irish descent in the U.K., you come to 6.7 million eligible citizens. And now that is pretty amazing because Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, only has a population itself, of 4.7 million.
Naomi O’Leary:
And this all came up because of a listener question, didn’t it? Which was essentially about what is the reaction of Irish people to this this phenomenon.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah. If you listen to our last episode, maybe you might remember Daniel from Scotland who was wondering about Irish attitudes to this recent surge in passport applications. I decided to get in touch with Daniel so he could share his thoughts in his own words.
Daniel Gallagher:
I’m Daniel Gallagher from Scotland. I live near Glasgow, which everyone near Glasgow just calls Glasgow. I took up my Irish citizenship end of 2015 because my dad, as he’s Irish by birth and if you’re born to an Irish parent that makes you Irish. But he was born outside of Ireland, so that means that I’m not automatically Irish, but I can just claim citizenship so I can register as a foreign-born Irish. So I started looking into it from about 2013, but never put a huge amount of haste into it until this sort of referendum was announced. I thought that’s maybe the time to get it done just in case there’s a rush afterwards. It’s been a really interesting podcast all of this stuff is things that, like it wasn’t like I knew a little bit of some of this history, but I didn’t know any of this had happened, which made me feel kind of bad then, like yeah you’ve become a citizen and you know nothing about the country at all. And I asked whether or not people in Ireland had, not so much of a negative view, I guess, but any view at all of the fact that tens of thousands of British people were now suddenly claiming Irish citizenship after the Brexit vote when they hadn’t done so before and whether or not that was viewed as sort of an opportunistic thing and whether or not Irish citizenship is sort of being seen as a commodity for people in the U.K., I didn’t what experience you have yourself in the UK or the media in the UK or if the red top tabloids are pretty rabid. And if there were 65,000 Irish people apply for British citizenship, it would be a horrendous sort of feeding frenzy of all these tabloids. I just was hoping it wasn’t sort of the same thing where people are being looked down on. Because I think diaspora, obviously it’s to try and sort of Irish family internationally, but I can’t imagine the UK ever doing the same thing. So I wasn’t really sure how, picturing another country doing that. And I actually read a piece and I think was Politico by Naomi about the fact that there aren’t that many houses in Ireland for all the people that are trying to move there, so I was quite surprised. And your last episode that, what, 80 percent people were in favour of the EU?
Naomi O’Leary:
Thanks so much for talking to us, Daniel.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, it was really interesting to hear his viewpoint. I think there is an especially interesting point there about the commodification of Irish citizenship here, which, of course, you know, isn’t the intention behind this citizenship by descent law.
Naomi O’Leary:
From speaking to Irish people, the attitudes I’ve heard are a bit of a mix. So a lot of people are just not bothered about the passport applications, like it’s not, it’s not something new. It’s not a new law or anything. And it certainly hasn’t set off any big debate in Ireland about this law and the fact that people can apply. You know, some people do have a mild begrudgery about it, you know. So like for some Irish people, you can imagine it can be threatening to their identity. So if person A who, let’s say, hasn’t ever been to Ireland can be on paper in the law as Irish as I am, does that devalue my identity in some way?
Tim McInerney:
And to get a general mood actually around Irish people’s feelings on this matter, I took a walk around Galway City in the west of the country a few weeks ago, and I asked people on the street what they thought about new Brexit applicants. Galway is quite a lively town and the local arts festival was in full swing so you’ll hear a bit of the street entertainment in the background there and the seagulls, which are pretty numerous, too. So let’s take a listen to what all Galwegians had to say. If you were to give advice to somebody who was becoming an Irish citizen for the first time, what would be your one piece of advice?
Voxpop:
I would look for that advice because I am English, living here, looking to get an Irish passport as well as my English passport.
Tim McInerney:
Is that true?
VOXPOP :
It’s very true, yeah.
Tim McInerney:
Alright. So you’re looking for a passport right now?
VOXPOP:
Yeah.
Tim McInerney:
And you have an Irish accent, have you lived here for awhile?
VOXPOP:
I’ve lived here since 2002. Moved over from England when eleven? Never decided to change my English passport. So now I will be seeking both.
Tim McInerney:
For people who are coming over with an English accent and maybe not too much knowledge about Ireland, do you think that it will be a welcoming place?
VOXPOP:
It depends where you go. Like I came over and went out to Oughterard where it’s a bit more rural and maybe not as accepting as it would be if you went to school in somewhere like Galway or Dublin. But I think that’s changing even since I’ve been here I think that’s changed a lot and you don’t see it as much anymore. And if anything, people have come over and maybe be proud of their accent as opposed to looking to change it.
Tim McInerney:
Ok. A lot of people who talk to us who are trying for a passport feel a little bit wary about this, a little bit apprehensive that they might not get a nice welcome over here. What would you say to them?
VOXPOP:
I don’t think there’s any need to be apprehensive about it whatsoever. I think it’s a very accepting country. I think there’s a lot of different cultures here. And yeah, I wouldn’t say anything against it.
VOXPOP:
We’re actually U.S. citizens.
Tim McInerney:
OK, even better.
VOXPOP:
So I don’t know if I have much of an opinion besides the fact that I would love to be an Irish citizen someday.
Tim McInerney:
Ok.
VOXPOP:
I love Ireland. If you have an Irish background, even though you might not directly be Irish, I think if you have an Irish grandparent, I think you are still Irish, right? So being a citizen I think is fair.
VOXPOP:
I suppose Irish people are quite aware of their own heritage and know that Irish people have been accepted worldwide. So I think it’s something that we want to pay back. As long as Irish people receive the same treatment over in the UK, I can’t see why it would be any bad feeling.
Tim McInerney:
Ok. And do you think it’s a difficult place to integrate over here?
VOXPOP:
No, I think, we’re in Galway at the moment and Galway is a perfect example of a city that welcomes foreign nationals. And actually that’s one of the things that makes Galway such a great place. When you walk down any of the streets here and you can instantly tell there’s a mix of different cultures, different nationalities, and they all add to the great fun.
VOXPOP:
I have no problem with people claiming their Irish citizenship if that’s what they want to do and it’s their right as descendants of people who are Irish. Fair play to them and welcome to Ireland.
VOXPOP:
Don’t hold back here. Come on.
VOXPOP:
No, I just don’t, I just don’t, like in the circle of friends that I have, you know, I don’t feel like there be any ill will towards people coming to Ireland. You know, the more the merrier.
Tim McInerney:
If this is going to continue, do you think that the citizenship by descent rule should be changed?
VOXPOP:
No. I think that’s, I think that’s kind of cool.
VOXPOP:
Yeah, I think that’s kind of a unique relationship between Great Britain and Ireland.
VOXPOP:
For people I suppose there’s a lot of Irish people are probably anti-Brexit. It’s like great, like there’s a way for you to kind of get around this bad decision that’s been made.
Tim McInerney:
Do you think they’d be less of a welcome for people claiming citizenship who voted for Brexit?
VOXPOP:
No, I don’t think so, because I just think people were misinformed, do you know what I mean? People didn’t know what they were voting for and if it was in Ireland, they just have another referendum and we could switch it back. But in the UK it doesn’t work that way, so people were, they were lied to. You know, some people made the wrong decision and they’re regretting it now, no more than in America. This is a way that people are choosing to live with, and you just kind of go well, I’m entitled to an Irish passport. I’ll get one. And then now I know I’m safe if I need to go and work in Spain or wherever. I’m covered.
Tim McInerney:
Okay, great. So the general response is welcome.
VOXPOP:
Yeah.
VOXPOP:
Sure. How often were we going over there in the 80s to where we populated the country? Of course we fucking, of course there are people over there related to us. Like Jesus Christ, we should let them over, the more the merrier.
VOXPOP:
I think maybe it’s time to rethink the whole Brexit thing.
VOXPOP:
Well yeah.
VOXPOP:
And maybe people shouldn’t have been so quick.
VOXPOP:
No, the old biddies that voted.
VOXPOP:
And maybe they should have like, you know, understood a little bit more about it. I mean, you can’t really blame everyone because not everybody was in the same boat. But I don’t think we should be so forgiving but maybe, like, it might bring a change and everybody might rethink the whole Brexit thing, which I think they’re doing anyway.
Tim McInerney:
For people who may have voted for Brexit and now who are looking for Irish citizenship, do you think that they would be less welcome?
VOXPOP:
Yes.
VOXPOP:
No, I don’t agree.
VOXPOP:
I agree. Absolutely.
VOXPOP:
You’ve learned from, as long as you can learn from your mistakes.
VOXPOP:
Hey!
VOXPOP:
Oh, Jenny, you’d like this question.
Tim McInerney:
I’ll leave you alone now. I will ask you one last question. If you could give one piece of advice to a new Irish citizen who is looking to integrate in society, what’s most important thing to know?
VOXPOP:
Don’t tell us your Irish. You’re not.
Tim McInerney:
But they will be. They’ll have citizenship.
VOXPOP:
That doesn’t make you Irish.
VOXPOP:
OK. Right. Anything else?
VOXPOP:
Walk into a pub alone. Go up to the bar. Start a conversation with the barmen and don’t leave for three hours.
VOXPOP:
Yeah, your heritage is your heritage really. Not only through descent but also if you’re living here. That also like, you lived here long enough. Those laws are there for a reason. They’re there. And I think they’re acceptable. They’re reasonable. I think that it was expected that a huge amount of people would apply for Irish citizenship, but I don’t think they should change the legislation or anything about it because I think that’s important to know. And exactly what he said about heritage, that that as well is an important aspect of it.
Tim McInerney:
Okay. And you guys said you grew up in Belgium, did you?
VOXPOP:
We did, yeah.
Tim McInerney:
And did you find it difficult to integrate into Irish society?
VOXPOP:
Not at all.
VOXPOP:
And that’s because we were lucky because there’s this huge amount of expats over there anyway, especially Irish expats. So even though we lived there — I was there 15 years — I still felt very connected to home, still very much the huge Irish community over there. And then when I decided to come back then for college, it didn’t take me that long at all. Still, though, we still feel very much a part of Belgium. Belgium accepted us with open arms, like all our, the friends that we have and things like that, like Belgium will always be home for us really, more so than Ireland. It’s weird how that works out, but it does then because of all those things you mentioned about having an open community and having those kinds of like we can have Belgian citizenship now if we wanted to.
VOXPOP:
Nice thing. Nice thing to have really.
VOXPOP:
Come to the west of Ireland straight away. Don’t go, don’t go east at all. Just come straight over here. It is the most beautiful part of the country, as far as I’m concerned. And anything you need to know about the country in general is over here. Best part is over here.
Tim McInerney:
You’re not the first one to say that.
VOXPOP:
I’d say cead mile failte. Like yeah, no bother. Yeah just come to the west of Ireland. Don’t say don’t stick to Dublin but yeah, no just take it easy.
VOXPOP:
We’d welcome them. You’re more than welcome to come. There more than entitled to the passport. That’s the rules of our land, so they’re entitled to it. And they’re more than welcome to come anytime they want. No, they’re entitled to the passport. They have Irish blood in them. So consequently, the law of the land says they can have a passport so we give them a passport.
VOXPOP:
Stay away from the Guinness. Stay away from the Guinness.
VOXPOP:
Just be themselves. Be themselves, yeah, and be accepted like we’re acceptable people. Happy enough to have anybody here that comes in and abides by the rules. And, you know, like lives peaceful lives. Everybody’s welcome.
VOXPOP:
Do you know what, I’m sorry but I am in total hurry. I’ve got to meet somebody.
Tim McInerney:
One quick question then, “Are they welcome in your eyes or not?”
VOXPOP:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
VOXPOP:
Yeah, entirely. Definitely.
Tim McInerney:
And would you have one piece of advice to new citizens?
VOXPOP:
Wear sunscreen.
Tim McInerney:
Are you serious?
VOXPOP:
I am serious.
Tim McInerney:
You’re wearing it yourself?
VOXPOP:
Yeah, I am.
Tim McInerney:
Okay. Very good. Thanks, guys. Good luck.
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh, Tim, that is just amazing. I think it’s fair to say fairly like overwhelmingly positive response there from Galway.
Tim McInerney:
Tell me about it. I was really surprised myself, you know, and I honestly, I was really fishing around for some negative comments to kind of give a bit more balance to the interview, but I didn’t find a single one. So actually, after I did those interviews, I wasn’t that surprised anymore that the country showed 81 percent favour rates for EU immigration like we saw last week in our last episode.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, I guess it gives a bit of context to that figure. And yeah, these were just random people who you just picked who you put a microphone in their face and spoke to, right?
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, sure. Like it should be taken into account that Galway is a university town with quite a young and international population.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And I guess it was also party time. It was something, the arts festival, or something so maybe people feeling a bit relaxed. Why don’t we hear from some of the people I spoke to who are actually applying for a passport about why they’re doing that. Now, I spoke to a whole range of people and far too many to even include. Thank you so much to everyone who spoke to me. And I apologize if you didn’t end up in there. So my overwhelming impression, just to sum up, was that the result of the Brexit referendum really was fundamental. It caused a lot of people to reconsider their identity. And I also spoke to people who wanted, really desperately wanted, to apply but couldn’t. They’d missed it by a generation. Or there was another who said they would happily renounce their British citizenship if they could take any other EU country’s passport instead. And I think there is, a lot of people at least I spoke to, said they were uncomfortable with the political turn that the UK has taken. And they do feel like they have less of a sense of belonging there. Let’s hear from some of those who I spoke to, though. So I’m standing in Camden with Joe, who’s a Doctor. Joe, how long have you been officially Irish or are you officially Irish?
Joe:
I’m not even officially Irish yet. So I applied for my passport, well, to like to register my birth about Christmas time.
Naomi O’Leary:
And why did you make the decision to do that?
Joe:
So it’s definitely linked to Brexit. I think it makes you question your identity more. I have two grandparents that are Irish, and my dad was the first of their family that was born in London. So his older brothers are all Irish. To say, oh no, you have an English passport, you’ll have to be checked in at the border to kind of check yourself in as an English person going to Ireland, it just feels to define yourself purely as an English person wouldn’t be, isn’t the way I feel as my identity. It makes me think I don’t know enough about Ireland. I probably haven’t been over to Ireland as much as I should. It’s sort of thinking I haven’t seen enough of Ireland. I don’t know enough about Irish culture. And really I should. I need to have some background behind the identity. Been on a road trip around Ireland recently.
Naomi O’Leary:
Did you make your road trip around Ireland deliberately because you were becoming Irish?
Joe:
Yeah, yeah. It was like a celebratory, Joe’s homecoming tour. I think it was nine days long. We went to 16 counties in the end. We drove through the North. We went up to Donegal down the west coast.
Naomi O’Leary:
What was your impression?
Joe:
Of how much vitality there is going to like cities like Galway and Cork, which I hadn’t been to before. I think it was very bustle-y and very active and alive.
Naomi O’Leary:
And what was people’s reaction when you said that you were coming back and that you had Irish citizenship?
Joe:
Generally positive, I think.
Helen Finch:
My name’s Helen Finch. I’m from Dublin, but I’m living in Leeds in the UK now. I lecture in German at the University of Leeds. Although I am Irish, I was born in Ireland I lived there until I was about 30, I’ve always had a British passport. My parents are immigrants from Britain. They registered me with a British passport when I was a baby. And I’ve always had a British passport since then. I always felt a bit funny as a teenager queuing up outside the British embassy and getting this piece of paper with a royal coat of arms on it. But I would try and squash that unease by going, “Well, we’re all part of Europe now.” The old divisions between Ireland and Britain mean nothing because national identities are dissolving into this really fantastic, open European identity.” They’re all burgundy passports. They all entitle you to the same rights as a European citizen. But now that after Brexit, I’ve got a real sense of unease that’s rising with using my British passport. I want to keep my European freedom of travel. I want to keep my freedom to travel to Ireland whenever I want to, to see my family. I have a daughter. I want to make sure that she’s Irish and that she’s European, and has the same freedoms and privileges as a European citizen as I’ve always had growing up. I see Ireland as being a somewhat Republican, meaning in the sense that Irish identity welcomes the equality of all citizens, that it’s a cosmopolitan kind of identity, that you can be Irish but still live in lots of places in the world, that you can be Irish and still come from somewhere else. I love the Irish language. I love Dublin where I grew up, that’s my home. So having an Irish passport expresses my destiny in the sense of my loyalty to the country that reared and educated me. Where most of my friends live, where my parents still live. And which has welcomed my parents as English people and never made them feel until now unwelcome. Britain seems like a scary, inward looking place which is excluding foreigners, which is turning its back on the European dream. So I feel now that I have to choose. At the moment I can still have dual identity and sort of dual citizenship, but if it ever comes to it and I have to give up one or the other, I’m going to keep my Irish passport.
Hannah Roberts:
My name is Hannah Roberts. I’m a freelance journalist living in Rome. I just want to have every base covered. My grandfather was born in Belfast. I wouldn’t say I feel Irish, but I have spent quite a lot of time there because my parents lived in Dublin. I have a lot of affection for Ireland and now that I’m going to be officially Irish I’d like to know more about the history and the relationship between the UK and Ireland. If I’m going to go around showing an Irish passport, I want to know what that means.
Neil Black:
I’m Neil Black. I’m a doctor in Derry in Northern Ireland. Derry is very close to the border, but a lot of my colleagues come back and forth across the border, perhaps live on one side and work on the other. Suddenly there was a psychological shock of a separation where lives had become so open and so free. I remember stopping at army checkpoints. That was right the way through Northern Ireland, but particularly at the border, there would be huge concrete bollards, army barracks and more checkpoints. For some people like us, we want to continue to be treated as European and not as separate. For me, Northern Ireland has been separate Separated from Ireland. Separated from the United Kingdom because of geography and because of a difference in outlook. Whenever Northern Ireland was separated off physically, yeah, we were cut off physically from the rest of Ireland and I don’t want that, seeing the separation from my family.
Britney :
My name is Britney. I’m an American. I’m a doctoral candidate at Columbia University where I study Russian literature. My maternal grandparents both immigrated to Chicago from Ireland and my mother’s side of the family has always heavily identified as Irish, although most of them at this point have been foreign and lived their entire lives in the United States. It was really my mom who spearheaded me and my siblings are becoming Irish nationals because she realized that we could apply for it. For the past four years, my husband and I have moved between Western Europe and the United States. And so when we had our son in 2015, there was no question that we would immediately apply for his Irish passport just because logistically it’s much easier. And we wanted him to be to be a real European when he was on European soil. And in general, certainly after the Brexit and just with a lot of the political changes in the past few years. Since we don’t know whether or not we will stay in Western Europe, we want to have as many kind of institutional ties, to be able to be residents here in Europe, as possible. Having the Irish passport makes our Irishness a little more real. And having the Irish passport makes me hope that my son will have opportunities to do things in Ireland. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, I would love for him to learn Irish. I’ve tried. I think I might be a little too. But he’s young, so I still have hope that he might be able to master the language or at least be able to read be able to read Irish literature in the original, which would be my dream.
Connie:
I’m Connie. I currently live in London. I’d say my main reason for applying, if I’m really honest, it’s definitely to have an EU passport. I’ve always known my grandmother was Irish. Because I grew up in France, my national identity is kind of, to a certain extent, quite fluid. The kind of concept of me feeling Irish to a certain extent is really nice. I like the idea of having a bit of a mixed heritage. I think the EU identity card is obviously the main part for me.
Michael Armstrong:
My name is Michael Armstrong. I’m originally from Carrickfergus, which is a town just north of Belfast. I played for an Irish passport, really, in a word, because of Brexit. I was posted in Brussels at the time of the referendum. Really, there’s a lot of kind of shock and sadness in the city at the time and it left a real impression on me. The other thing that did was that the lack of any real thought or debate about how Brexit would impact on Northern Ireland from UK politicians during the referendum and really in any real way since. So it was kind of a wakeup call, how little Northern Ireland kinda matters in the grand scheme of things and it was totally different. There’s a big contrast on the EU side because you had Michel Barnier’s team, they half like the Irish border as like one of their top three priorities. One of the things that I really took away from it was the extent to which continental Europeans kind of see the EU first and foremost as a peace project. And after Brexit, there is a real focus on the Good Friday Agreement as part of that history. I felt part of that. I wanted to remain part of that, even if the UK was leaving the EU, I wasn’t going anywhere. Coming from Northern Ireland, you’re kind of a bit of mongrel as far as national identity is concerned. You kind of don’t fit in anywhere. There’s elements of Irish society that feels foreign to me. More foreign than stuff like the BBC or the NHS. I’m of the generation that grew up after The Troubles. The Good Friday kind of give you a freedom to develop and choose an identity or a mix of identities. Just, you know, get on with your life. I’m glad to have my Irish passport. It’s really nice, you know, coming through Dublin Airport to be told by you know the passport guys, “Welcome home.”
Naomi O’Leary:
Of course, it’s different in Northern Ireland. There the issue of Irish passport is overlaid with the existing kind of divided politics and identity questions up there. So some really hardcore unionists who would identify as British are very much against people claiming Irish passports because they see it as like a Republican agenda through the backdoor.
Tim McInerney:
Surprise, surprise.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, surprise, surprise. But you know, there was, and it must be said as quite a striking moment, when Ian Paisley Junior — I don’t know if you saw this, but he is a member of Parliament for the Democratic Unionist Party and he’s the son of the radical preacher of the same name, Ian Paisley, who founded the DUP. Ian Paisley, the father was pretty famous for anti-Irish views and being completely uncompromising as a unionist, but his son Ian Paisley Junior wrote on Twitter, “My advice is that if you’re entitled to a second passport, then take one. I sign off lots of applications for constituents.”
Tim McInerney:
Wow. Well, that has to be something pretty historic.
Naomi O’Leary:
Well, that’s how it was taken. I mean, there was headlines about this tweet. You know, it was amazing. I spoke to one listener who got in touch before the line on the phone was just too bad to play the clip but he described this amazing moment when his unionist grandmother was reassured by family members who were applying for passports by being told that Ian Paisley Junior has said it was okay.
Tim McInerney:
Wow, so that has a major effect, really?
Naomi O’Leary:
Well, I think it is quite fundamental, yeah. And it will be really interesting going forward because there is a referendum scheduled to extend voting rights for the Irish President to anyone who holds citizenship. I thought it was really interesting to hear Neil Black describe the moment when he travelled abroad as a teenager and he realised that Irishness wasn’t something that was defined by your politics. And of course, Irish citizenship is a different thing to ethnic identity. So Ireland includes, of course, ethnic variety. And the very idea of the state was founded on the idea of including different traditions within it. So if you’re an Irish citizen, then you are Irish from a legal point of view. I think personally it’s great if people want to engage with the history and culture. But, you know, there is no actual measure of one person being more or less Irish than anyone else. If you have a passport, if you have citizenship, then you are Irish, regardless of whether you cannot, you know, pour a pint to make a good cup of tea.
Tim McInerney:
Right, sure. Yeah, I can guarantee you I pour a terrible pint in my limited days as a barman, but right it’s important to underline actually I think, the way I see it anyway, Irishness, you know, is defined by whatever Irish citizens do. And that’s changing all the time. We are all actively creating and advancing the meaning of Irishness right now. You heard the guy in the clip from Galway there saying, you know, don’t tell us that you’re Irish just because you have Irish citizenship. You know, personally, I would say the exact opposite. I would say, do tell us you’re Irish, you know, because once you have that piece of paper, you’ve become part of the story. And what you do is being included in what Irishness even is.
Naomi O’Leary:
I love that idea. And it is so true. Like culture is dynamic. It’s not something that’s preserved or frozen in aspic. It’s actually constantly changing depending on the set of people who are around. And we are, in fact, creating it all the time. We did actually ask our listeners to weigh in on this question in our last episode. So we ask people to tell us, you know, what are their reactions to the wave of Irish passport applicants? And thanks so much to everyone who took the time to get in touch with us.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah. And we have to say that your reactions on the Internet as well, we’re pretty positive, too. And there were lots of great insights as well.
Naomi O’Leary:
Here’s one, for example, from Ben. So he contacted us from email from Washington, D.C. and he said he was born and only ever lived in the USA, but when he discovered he could qualify for Irish citizenship, then he basically looked at it as a way to connect with his heritage, and also to honour his Irish grandmother, whole was very close to. So he said he already had a very deep connection to Ireland all his life and the citizenship registration just kind of made it official.
Tim McInerney:
That’s lovely, Ben. And thanks for your message.
Naomi O’Leary:
Interestingly enough, some Irish people and also applicants for passport raised the question of whether there should be some kind of cultural test for people applying to have Irish passports, like some knowledge of Ireland, or even an Irish language test. There isn’t anything like that. One applicant told me that she was actually finding digging up the marriage certificates and so on, so difficult. She would actually prefer if she could just learn Irish and do a test in it.
Tim McInerney:
It must be very difficult to find those certificates indeed.
Naomi O’Leary:
It was also out of a genuine interest, you know, like she thought that it would be better way of testing commitment. And it’s actually something that she wasn’t the only one to mention. So I heard from, I think, three or four people who said that they were exploring the Irish language in one way or another, like downloading the Duolingo app, for example. And one had even researched doing a course in the Gaeltacht region of Donegal.
Tim McInerney:
Wow.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah.
Tim McInerney:
Another comment came in on Twitter. This one is from Michael Mulligan. And he noted that the citizenship by descent is all very well and good, but that it’s a double standard, considering that some people who are born in Ireland to foreign parents are not automatically entitled to citizenship under the 2004 referendum. And this is a really good point, Michael. You’re talking, I guess, of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. That amendment was approved by a referendum in 2004, and it controversially ruled that children born to foreign parents would not automatically be Irish citizens, as they once had been.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. So under the amendment, basically a child’s parents would have to have already been lawfully resident in Ireland for three years in order for them to be granted citizenship. The Fianna Fáil government at the time saw it as closing a constitutional loophole which had been created by the Good Friday Agreement. I can remember there was this very nasty talk of anchor babies. There was an idea that people could somehow get themselves into Northern Ireland and spawn merely with the idea of getting a right to stay in the country. It came at a time when Ireland was experiencing large scale immigration for the very first time. It was seen as a knee-jerk reaction to that.
Tim McInerney:
Sure. Yeah. And I also remember another time that was being thrown around a lot “maternity tourism”, which I mean, I even remember thinking at the time how crass it was to talk about human beings like this. You know, these are mothers and babies. Maternity tourism is a very dehumanizing phrase. But the greatest fallout really that was created by this referendum was that it created an entire generation of children born to foreign nationals whose status and rights were and continue to be very ambiguous. So in particular, children of asylum seekers have, as a result of that referendum, a direct result, been forced to wait for years in so-called direct provision centres while their applications are being processed, which is just really crazily unnecessary and causes all sorts of profound long-term problems in areas like education and integration, as you can imagine. And as you can imagine as well, this only gets worse as the children grow up.
Naomi O’Leary:
We can have children who have lived in the country from birth with, you know, limerick accents or whatever. And they have to, for example, apply for university education as international applicants with the enormous fees, unreachable for many of them, that that implies and it’s quite stark to think that having an Irish grandmother might give someone more rights than having been born and raised in the country merely because of where their parents come from.
Tim McInerney:
Absolutely, yeah.
Naomi O’Leary:
There is certainly a double standard at work in the application process. So, for example, I know someone who recently naturalized as Irish. So this was someone who would always have considered herself Irish, didn’t know any other home, had lived in Ireland since she was two, married to an Irish person and with Irish children. So she went through the process of naturalization to have kind of, you know, legal certainty. And for one thing, it’s much more expensive than getting, than applying through descent. So it’s about a thousand euro compared to maybe 300 euro. And it’s also massively onerous. So, for example, she had to supply bank statements going back years to prove that she wasn’t a burden on the state.
Tim McInerney:
God, that’s crazy. And she was there since she was 2?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. Yeah. Already with citizenship from another EU country. For me, it kind of raises the question like what is it about descent that our law values so highly? Like, why are descent claims privileged in this way over, for example, you know, time living in the country or a family ties like marriage or children?
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, it definitely brings up a whole host of questions, which I suppose are inherent in the concept of nationality in the first place. Like, you know, we have to face it that the whole idea of nationality is pretty arbitrary and difficult to define anyway.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And of course, contingent on the time in which it exists. And from my understanding, anyway, there’s basically two rival concepts in citizenship law. So the two traditional ways of claiming citizenship or defining citizen is jus soli, which means the right of the soil, so that gives citizenship to anyone who’s born on the territory of the country. And that’s like normal in basically the Americas, North and South. And then there’s jus sanguinis, which is more common in Europe. That’s blood, right, essentially. Many states have a kind of a mix of both, but Ireland has quite a strong, jus sanguinis in allowing citizenship to be claimed through a grandparent. But it’s actually not unique, though, you know, it’s quite common for countries to allow parents to pass on citizenship to their children. You know, everywhere from like Australia to Turkey and France, and a country that has quite a similar law to Ireland is actually Hungary. But the strongest version of this law is actually from Italy, a fellow immigration nation. So for Italian citizenship, it doesn’t actually matter how long ago your ancestors left Italy. If each generation maintains their Italian citizenship through the years, you can claim to. It doesn’t matter how long ago it goes. Similarly to Ireland, that emphasis on descent, it accommodates a big diaspora and strong links with the diaspora. But it compares very disadvantageously to immigrants who have come to the country and their children who really have to jump through hoops.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, so that’s really interesting, actually.
Naomi O’Leary:
Tim, I’ve heard these suggestions over social media that, you know, maybe Ireland can’t cope with an influx of people if there are going to be loads of new citizens because there is a housing shortage after all.
Tim McInerney:
Sure, like Daniel said.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, Daniel brought this up. Essentially my responses to this are like this. OK, so number one, it is not clear to me that everybody who claims a passport is going to turn up in Dublin ports, right?
Tim McInerney:
Certainly not. That’s not the point at all.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And the second thing is, no one has been able to establish that were this unlikely thing to happen, if the returning diaspora suddenly all did come home that this would be a bad thing.
Tim McInerney:
Good point.
Naomi O’Leary:
And then the third thing is like the ability of the diaspora to return, that’s very much on purpose. Like this is a deliberate policy. The Irish government is actually desperate for you to come. So they want you to come, whether to come back and work and bring your skills — there’s actually a whole policy in place to attract people back — or to come for a holiday. Discover your roots. You might have seen Tourism Ireland targeting you with ads because you know they want you to come back. We actually have a minister for the diaspora.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, sure. There was all this talk, wasn’t there, especially last year with our former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. He created a whole like festival, The Gathering, he called it to try and law people back for a holiday. And maybe, you know, they might buy a house and settle back down.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. Ireland totally sees its diaspora as an asset. And it totally makes sense if you consider well, it’s one way that a small country can have greater clout in the world. But also, if you look at our history, so the history of Ireland has actually been the struggle to get people to stay, not to keep people out.
Tim McInerney:
Right. Of course. And like we’ve mentioned a few times, the scale of emigration from Ireland has been enormous. In fact, by the beginning of the 20th century, the population of Ireland had actually dipped below 3 million, which was less than half of what it had been before the famine, 50 or 60 years previously. So at that point, Ireland was really quite drastically depopulating.
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh, so is this the answer to why there are possibly more people of Irish descent in Britain than there are on the island of Ireland?
Tim McInerney:
Well, it’s part of it, of course. I mean, but if we go back far enough, there has always been a constant transfer of people between the two islands, logically enough. Interestingly, actually, while history often focuses on invaders coming to Ireland through or via Britain, say the Vikings or the Normans or what have you, we also to remember that Britain was largely populated as well by Irish settlers at different times in history. Did you know, for instance, that Scotland means Land of the Irish?
Naomi O’Leary:
Ok, vaguely I had heard something about this, but I have no idea what it actually means. Please explain.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, it comes from the word Scoti, which was a late Roman term for the Irish. The Romans were probably talking about the Gaelic Kingdom of Dalriada, which straddles the western Scottish coast and the north eastern Irish coast. It was a kingdom that was on both islands, and people there would have spoken Gaelic. It was the kingdom where you would have found the island of Iona, which a lot of people will have heard of, that’s where the Irish monk Columbanus set up his famous monastery, and the Scoti, like we mentioned in our Catholic Church episode, played a major role in Christianizing the people of the island of Britain, the Picts in the east of Scotland and the Anglo-Saxons in northern England.
Naomi O’Leary:
Wow. We have already looked at that close geographical and cultural relationship between the Northern Ireland and the West of Scotland, but I didn’t know it went back that far. OK. But those of Irish heritage today were probably don’t need to trace their family tree back quite all the way to Dál Riata.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, sure. Right. The bulk of the Irish diaspora in Britain today can probably trace their heritage to about the last 150 years.
Naomi O’Leary:
Okay. So this was, of course, due to the famine that we mentioned. It’s just like an unavoidable monolith in Irish history of that period.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah. And these massive migrations due to the famine to Britain were very unsettling for everyone involved. Ireland was, of course, under UK jurisdiction at that time, but most people in England probably wouldn’t have been prepared for just how impoverished and desperate the Irish people fleeing the famine were. And they wouldn’t have prepared neither for the sheer number of them that would be seeking refuge. In fact, by 1851, almost a quarter of Liverpool’s population had been born in Ireland. So you can imagine what a cultural shock that must have been.
Naomi O’Leary:
A quarter. And of course, loads of these migrants wouldn’t have spoken any English. They would have been Irish speakers. You have to think of the context that British opinion was hardly favourable to the Irish at that time.
Tim McInerney:
Right. To say the least, right. Victorian Britain was a really unwelcoming place for the Irish in the mid 19th century. Many people at the time felt like the famine had been a drain on the United Kingdom’s resources and that the Irish were getting a free ride from the government through starvation relief.
Naomi O’Leary:
Familiar echoes there.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. There had also been another Republican rebellion in 1848, which was, of course, largely a response to the famine. So the old fears of Irish treachery and insurrection were being freshly uncovered at the same time.
Naomi O’Leary:
Tim, one of the things that your research actually focuses on is how there was a racialized element to all of this at the time, like those famous cartoons from the period that show Irish people to be like ape-like beings and a kind of a primitive, violent, inferior race.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, for sure. And we’ll definitely talk about this phenomenon more and further episodes of British depictions of the Irish as monsters or cannibals is a tradition that goes right back to the earliest days of colonisation. And in lots of ways, this tradition never really went away. And fascinatingly, in the 19th century, we can see this monster imagery being steadily translated into racist discourse, which was of course growing at that time. So in the British and in the American media at this time we see the Irish increasingly being depicted as simian, sub humans, biologically prone to violence and disorder. And you can still see traces of this archetype in caricatures of the of the leprechaun you see today. You know, who’s, of course, dressed up in 19th century clothes. It’s still even kind of lingers on in the in the patty caricatures that’s, you know, were still pretty common not so long ago.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And actually in current cartoons, if you check out The Daily Mail.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah. Yeah. And also still common in the Daily Mail. Of course, racism is a very handy way to brush aside inconvenient political upheavals. And it’s a very handy way maybe to demonise thousands and thousands of refugees who are arriving on your shores without really having to think about humanitarian causes. You know, it puts it all down to biology, as it were. It’s also a profoundly effective way, of course, to make civil inequalities or social inequality seem like a product of the natural world. So, yeah, it would have been really rough going for the Irish immigrants in that regard.
Naomi O’Leary:
I just can’t imagine what it would have been like for those Irish immigrants. Like imagine the culture shock. They would have gone through the trauma of having lived to a cataclysmic starvation, and then they would have travelled from what was a practically medieval agricultural world into what was then like the most industrialized nation in the world.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, absolutely. And despite all this, they did settle in pretty quickly. In the 1840s and 50s, we see the developments of Irish districts in the big cities like Little Ireland in Manchester or Kilburn in London, which is, you know, some people still call County Kilburn today. These districts were mostly slums, of course, we have to remember that these emigrants came with absolutely nothing. They were already half starved when they got off the boats. Engels actually famously wrote about these Irish slums in his condition of the working class in England. That was in 1845 where he says, “Whenever a district is distinguished for a special filth and a special ruthlessness, the Explorer may safely count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces, which he recognizes at the first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy.”
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh, wow. Yeah. You can always tell my house for its special ruinnessness.
Tim McInerney:
Mine too.
Naomi O’Leary:
This tide of immigration to Britain, it kind of continued just unabated through the 20th century, right? So especially during the difficult eras of economic hardship that followed in independence. But there’s a significant wave that’s traceable in the 1950s and 1960s. So it’s basically a time when the UK was rebuilding after the Second World War and it needed loads of imported labour. So there were immigrants from Ireland and they were immigrants from loads of other former colonies like Jamaica and so on. And they filled that gap and they went to work, particularly in the public service, like things like hospitals and public transport and building projects.
Tim McInerney:Right. Soo about three quarters of a million Irish moved to Britain in the 1950s and 60s, which again is equivalent to a good chunk of the current population, so this is a massive movement of people. By the end of the 1960s, one in 10 nurses in the UK were Irish.
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh my goodness. Something that sometimes left out of the cultural memory is that a huge amount of these immigrants were actually young single women, and there were quite a few reasons for that. As we mentioned in previous episodes, under the Catholic Church, Ireland could be a really restrictive and scary place for women in the mid 20th century, and Britain could be a safe haven for them, you know, trying to escape out of that world. It has a curious echo today because restrictions to reproductive rights in Ireland, North and South, means that it’s still somewhere that women go off to on the boat.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, absolutely. In the 1960s, you can only imagine what it must have been like to go from a world of Magdalene laundries into swinging 60s London, you know, with miniskirts and beehives and Carnaby Street and the whole lot. And of course, the vast majority of these migrants settle down in Britain. And they did become an intricate part of the story of that country.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And so the Irish British identity is a very strong one with a long history. And pretty much any sizeable town or city will have, you know, Irish associations, which were, you know, had a really strong role in helping arriving immigrants. It’s a history that’s very much alive and with us. You know, I met a man in Donegal in his 90s and he had only learned English as an adult when he emigrated to London to work as a builder. Can you imagine what that would have been like for him?
Tim McInerney:
Incredible.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And it’s another thing that struck me when I was living in Britain for a while was, you know, a lot of these stories they didn’t turn out well. There’s a lot of sadness there. I met a lot of people who’d moved over and it just it had gone wrong for them. But, you know, they couldn’t go back to Ireland because, you know, they were ashamed to admit it or they just didn’t have anything to go back to.
Tim McInerney:
Sure, yeah.
Naomi O’Leary:
And they became they became kind of exiles. You would often come across homeless people, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but you suddenly hear someone with an accent and it sounds like they never left Cavan. It’s not always like that, though. The immigration is often two ways and there’s a constant sort of interchange. Over the years of people who go back and forth and sometimes it skips a generation. And of course, the diaspora were an integral part in the founding of Ireland’s independent state.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, right. Actually, yeah. Thinking back to our Elites episode, we might think of the socialist activist Michael Davitt, who largely inspired the land war. He spent most of his life in an Irish immigrant community in Britain, or maybe like the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. She was English born and of Anglo Irish descent, and she was a major figure in the war of independence.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, there’s just too many to possibly list, but there’s just a ton of old rebels and Fenians and the survivors of failed rebellions, but like based themselves abroad, raising money and trying to coordinate the next attempt. And if you look at the cast of characters who led the 1916 Rising, you can see that just as an example, you had figures like James Connolly, who, of course, was born to Irish parents in Edinburgh and ended up back in Dublin leading the Easter Rising.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah, right.
Naomi O’Leary:
But it wasn’t just leaders. There were lots of kind of lower down figures as well. And there’s one story in particular which I wanted to highlight, which I came across in the Bureau of Military History archives. So essentially, those are essentially a big memory collecting project. So the Bureau of Military History was given the task of collecting witness statements and photos and evidence from all the people who were involved in the struggle for Irish independence. And this was in the early days of the new state and it was done with the aim of kind of building up a state history. So all these statements were locked away in secrecy and they were only released into the public domain in 2001. And now, amazingly, they’ve been digitalized and they are online at BureauofMilitaryHistory.ie.
Tim McInerney:
Oh, great. We’ll have to put that on the website.
Naomi O’Leary:
Some of the stories are just amazing. And they really kind of give you an idea of the ordinary human beings that were behind history. But there was one in particular which I felt we had to include. So it’s the testimony of a guy called William Daley. He was born in London. His mom was from Kerry and his dad had Irish parents but was also London born. And William Daley had actually scarcely left London itself, like, let alone England. But he got involved with the Gaelic League, which was an organisation that promoted the Irish culture and language.
Tim McInerney:
Right. Yeah, we talked about that actually in our language episode didn’t we?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, so when he was 21 in the middle of the First World War, he decides that he’s not interested in fighting for Britain. He doesn’t identify with Britain at all. So what does he decide to do?
Tim McInerney:
What does he do?
Naomi O’Leary:
He meets up with a couple of London Irish mates at Euston Station in London. He hides a rifle under his coat and he gets the ferry to Dublin with the aim of rebelling to form an independent state. This is from his testimony that he recalled some years later.
William Daley voiced by Terry Daley:
Now for the turning point in my life, I was born in Dockhead, a rough and ready course of London. I knew nothing of Ireland except in a hazy kind of way until I joined the Gaelic League. So in a sense, I adopted Ireland as my own country until it adopted me at Easter 1916. I met Dave Begley and Jimmy Riley at Euston Station at 8:00pm. I had my rifles with me, one taken asunder, the other hanging on to my long overcoat, and I had to stand the whole distance from London to Dublin.
Naomi O’Leary:
So just to fill in what happens next as the ends up storming the GPO, which is the key point of the Easter Rising. Then the rebels hold buildings which were all around the centre of Dublin for roughly a week and at a certain point, James Connolly, that leader who he mentions, asked him to help to rig up a radio broadcast signal so that they can broadcast internationally that an independent Republic has been declared. So here’s how he describes that.
William Daley voiced by Terry Daley:
Connolly called and told us to bring an electrician with me and report to Captain Breen, engineer Officer at Reece’s jewellery shop at the corner of Abbey Street. I got another London Irish lad, Johnny O’Connor, Blimey, whom I knew was a spark. And we proceeded to races. In answer to our knock, a fierce looking man opened the door. I told him my instructions and he would not believe me. My strong cockney accent put me in a bad position, and Blimey’s accent was even worse and red moustache bristled up, and he took me in, presumably to make a prisoner of me. When suddenly a voice was heard saying to the man at the door, It’s all right, Paddy. That lad is one of us.”
Naomi O’Leary:
By the way, that was read by Terry Daley, a man of London Irish stock himself, whose grandfather had the same name as this guy, William Daley.
Tim McInerney:
Brilliant. Thanks, Terry.
Naomi O’Leary:
As far as we could establish, it’s not the same guy.
Tim McInerney:
Must be some relation.
Naomi O’Leary:
Could be, relation unknown.
Tim McInerney:
So it’s pretty clear then, after all that, that the diaspora in Britain has been pretty central to modern Ireland.
Naomi O’Leary:
So why don’t we have a look at where this citizenship by descent law came from?
Tim McInerney:
Right. Even though the state was formed in 1922, it wasn’t until 1949, really, that this citizenship law settled down. That was the moment when the Republic was recognised internationally. So about seven years after in 1956, the government brought in this new law which offered citizenship not only to people within the free state or the Republic as it was then, but also to people in Northern Ireland if they should want it. And this set up also their citizenship by descent rule, which we have today. At the time, of course, this was considered a little bit controversial because lots of people in Northern Ireland saw it as undermining the border, you know.
Naomi O’Leary:
So if we look at how it actually works in practice, what it means is if you’re born outside the island of Ireland, you’re automatically entitled to citizenship if one of your parents is a citizen or if one of your grandparents was or is a citizen. It doesn’t go any further than that. So you can’t claim it from like a cousin or a great grandparents or something like that. And you can also apply for a parent or grandparent is “Irish born.” So Irish born, you know, that’s a way of saying if you’re a parent or grandparent was born in Northern Ireland because the Good Friday agreement.
Tim McInerney:
Is it a difficult process for citizenship by descent applications?
Naomi O’Leary:
Essentially, the way the Irish government keeps track of its diaspora abroad is something called the foreign birth register. So basically Irish people who have children abroad, for whatever reason, and want them to be in the system, need to register the births, which you do through an embassy. People claiming passports through descent works in the same way. So you just have to basically catch up and put yourself on the foreign birth register and you can get an Irish passport application form from any consulate. And they basically lay out what’s required in each case quite clearly. It essentially requires proving the link that you have. So if it’s an Irish born parent or grandparent and so on, you might need their birth certificate and you might need their marriage certificate. So it probably means a fair bit of digging around for documents. And, you know, it’s a little bit of work, a little bit of concentration, but it’s not excessively onerous. The whole process, you know, now that the waiting times are longer, can take about a year.
Tim McInerney:
Okay. All right. So there’s no excuses, guys. I mean, we’ve given you everything you need. If you’re eligible for one of these passports, get on it. And you know, we’ll see you in Ireland.
Tim McInerney:
We’ll see you in Ireland. Pint are on us, actually no, wait. There’s going to be like 100,000 of you. Maybe not.
Tim McInerney:
Pints are on you.
Naomi O’Leary:
Thanks so much for being with us.
Tim McInerney:
Actually, our next episode is not unrelated to this topic and it’s such a big issue. We’re going to be looking at that great cataclysm of Irish history we briefly mentioned the famine.
Naomi O’Leary:
And if you have any thoughts on this that you’d like to share or suggestions for subjects, you can get in touch on theirishpassport@gmail.com.
Tim McInerney:
Yeah. And we have our lovely Facebook site created by me as well. And on Twitter at @PassportIrish.
Naomi O’Leary:
Don’t forget to rate our podcast if you liked it and do subscribe to get future episodes.
Tim McInerney:
Absolutely. By the way, thanks to everyone who has shared or recommended our podcast so far, why not share this one, if you like, with anyone you know who has applied or is thinking of applying for an Irish passport. It might just help them out.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. Great idea. Let’s form our own diaspora. Thanks so much for being with us.