Irish citizenship by descent (complicated!)

Hi all, new to the board!

My husband (and his sister) are looking into applying for Irish citizenship, if there's a chance at all. Their grandfather was assumed to be a (maybe automatic) Irish citizen by descent through his Irish-born grandparents because of the laws at the time of his birth.

Here are the things that are confusing us:
- My husband's grandfather was born in 1906 in South Africa before the FBR existed and his mother's and grandparents' nationalities were NOT South African (all of them Irish/"British").
- My husband's father was born in 1949 in South Africa, before the 1956 Irish nationality law was enacted.
- South Africa didn't allow dual nationality until 1995, which likely prevented my husband's grandfather from applying for a passport and he passed away in 1975.
- My husband's father passed away in 2016.

The thing that's causing me trouble is the fact that my husband has a very "old" family so recent amendments to the laws don't apply to them and I cannot find any information about how the historical laws influenced this at all.

If anyone has any information or help about how we can go forward (especially if there's any chance for this to work out at all!) it would be greatly appreciated!

I’m not a Foreign Born Registry expert. But I assume you are hoping to apply for FBR. FBR requires an Irish born grandparent, not just an Irish grandparent- to the best of my knowledge. So the complications you mention, are I don’t think, relevant.

Unless you have a grandparent born on the island of Ireland, I think you are unfortunately out of luck. To gain citizenship with foreign born ancestors they need to be either children of a parent born on the island, or a child born to a parent already on the registry.

Thanks so much, this is very helpful - I really appreciate it!