Irish passport for NI residents

Hi. I am on tier 2 skilled worker visa for 4.5 years, 2 years i lived in England and last 2.5 years in Northern Ireland. My ILR is due in 6 months. What’s the criteria for me if i want to get Irish passport too along with British passport?

Are you married to an Irish citizen? You need to be one in order to apply for Irish passport through NI residence. If so, and you've been married with them for 3+ years, wait until you rack up 3 years of NI residence and apply via Form 8 on ISD website.

Otherwise, you have no direct path to Irish citizenship.

Theoretically you can apply for a British passport, get it and start your journey to an Irish one anew by moving to the Republic, eg Dublin, but that's the best you can get.

I hope you understand the difference between the island of Ireland and ROI. Republic has its own naturalization laws which are in no way linked to your British citizenship.

Yes I understand the difference between NI and ROI. I heard some natives of NI have both british and irish passports. I heard that if you have British passport and have lived in NI for a couple of years, you can get Irish passport too.

Botman wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 11, 2022 10:33 pm

Yes I understand the difference between NI and ROI. I heard some natives of NI have both british and irish passports. I heard that if you have British passport and have lived in NI for a couple of years, you can get Irish passport too.

As I said, for that you need to be a spouse of Irish citizen or have Irish (grand)parents (which is often FBR and different story).
Not aware of a provision that allocated British subject an Irish passport just due to amount of time they spent in NI, most likely because there isn't one.
You'd have to move to ROI and spend there 5+ years (about 7 in total currently since naturalization takes approx 2 years) to gain another citizenship.

Botman wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 11, 2022 10:33 pm

I heard that if you have British passport and have lived in NI for a couple of years, you can get Irish passport too.

There is never such thing.