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by Ibeeby » Tue Oct 28, 2025 7:21 pm
Its a bit more complicated than that in my experience although I am still going through the on-line process as a UK spouse of an Irish citizen living in Ireland. As far as I can tell the new on-line process is far simpler than the previous largely paper process:
You will also have to provide evidence that you have been living together for (I think) three months in the year prior to her application (potentially different bank statements etc) - which I seem to recall meant evidence for both and if you have, say, a joint account you cannot each use the same evidence;
I needed to nominate three referees (although unlike the paper system where they had to write a letter all you need to provide is name and telephone number) - they must be Irish Citizens;
You also need to sign a declaration to support your spouse's application - I think that had to be witnessed.
There are certain differences for those resident in NI so it may be worth you looking at the detailed process set out in the government web site. I don't know whether your spouse will have to go through the reckonable residence process (I didn't as I am a UK citizen already and don't need to prove a right to be here). How that works for NI where the spouse's right to reside is outside of the competence of the Irish authorities I don't know.
It may be that Garda vetting is not required for NI but a police certificate may be. I had to get a UK police certificate a few years ago when I was doing some work for a government agency and it took about 10 days.
I had understood that a tax clearance certificate may be needed but it is not (for me).
You can make some progress on the ISD on-line application form and save to continue later so that may be worth starting. For the evidence I stitched together an array of pdfs to make a couple of files to save spending all weekend uploading files - that seemed to work.
Have a read - there are a couple of detailed documents on the government web site that explain clearly the requirements - just look carefully for the section breaks so that you don't find yourself conflating different requirements.
When you get through the process to the eVetting procedure your spouse will have to declare, with a granularity of a year (ie day and month of move not required) EVERY address he or she has ever lived at. Ever. Since I am in my 60s and have lived all over the world that was not straightforward at all. It is said that the eVetting process can take longer for those applying who have lived in the USA or Australia but I have lived in both and it didn't seem to slow things down - 9 days in my case. But I am thankful that my mother could remember addresses from the 1960s - all I had to do was look up the post-code or zip code.
Hope that helps.
