An Irish passport changes what is possible for your children.
It is not a product you buy. It can come at the end of a real life in Ireland, and it opens doors for your family in the EU and beyond. Here are the roads that lead to it.
Straight to the process:NaturalisationCitizenship by descentCommon Travel AreaDual citizenshipChildren
Let us start with what really keeps you up at night.
It is not a residence rule. Nobody lies awake over a processing time.
It is three developments. I will set them out soberly, because they need no drama.
The first: military service is back in northern Europe. Sweden has required young people to attend call-up assessment again since 1 July 2017, with basic training under conscription from 2018. Denmark has called up women on equal terms with men since 1 July 2025. Britain ended national service in 1960 and has none. But if your son or daughter holds a Swedish or Danish passport, this is no longer an abstract debate. It is a date in the diary.
The second I have to place carefully, because a lot of nonsense goes round about it. Some people fear being taxed on their citizenship. Let me be entirely clear: in Britain there is no such thing. Whether you pay UK tax depends on your residence, on the days you spend in the country and the ties you keep there, not on your passport. It is not the law. It is a worry about the future, and whether it ever becomes more than that, nobody knows today. But I understand anyone who asks the question while the answer is open.
The third: digital ID. The British government consulted on a national digital ID in spring 2026 and says nobody will be obliged to hold one. That such a system is coming is foreseeable. What it will mean one day is guesswork, and I will not paint you a scenario here.
Three worries, very different in weight. But all three lead to the same, very old thought:
A family stands more securely when its whole life does not hang on a single state.
That is not my theory. At our last Ireland seminar in Cork, 15 of 20 participants came for exactly this reason. Not for the tax. Not for the house prices. For the passport.
I left Germany 25 years ago. So I am not writing this from the sidelines.
Why the Irish passport, of all of them
The Irish passport is a full European Union passport, not a lesser one.
That is the first point, and it matters more than it sounds. A second passport that is weaker than the first is a souvenir.
The second: Ireland is a country people like. No empire behind it, no enemies in front of it.
The third: Ireland is not a member of NATO. It is militarily non-aligned. For a family thinking about call-up assessments for the first time, that is no small detail.
And the fourth point is one no other EU passport can offer.
Through the Common Travel Area, Irish citizens enjoy far-reaching rights in the United Kingdom, as well as the special links with the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. Since Brexit, an ordinary EU passport no longer gives its holder the automatic right to move to Britain and live there. The Irish one joins both worlds: the European Union and the United Kingdom.
If you are British, read that sentence the other way round. Since Brexit your passport takes you into the Schengen area for 90 days in any 180; living and working on the Continent needs a permit. Britain allows dual citizenship, so an Irish passport gives you the European Union back without costing you anything at home.
Two countries, one document.
You do not know today which of these doors your child will want to open at 23. University in London. A career in Dublin. A company in the United Kingdom. A life somewhere in the European Union. All you can do is make sure as many of them as possible are not locked.
What applies today, and what is being decided
You have to keep two things apart, and the second matters more.
Today, naturalisation under the rules in force can in principle become possible after five years of residence. If you are married to an Irish citizen, the road is shorter: here the relevant residence can be three years. As a British citizen or a citizen of the EEA or Switzerland you need no Irish residence permit for this. No golden visa. No chain of permits. You live in Ireland, and that residence can count. Under today's law there is also no English test, no Irish test and no history test.
And on 9 September 2026 the Irish government decided to have a bill drafted as a priority that turns five years into eight. The government names a language test in English, Irish or Irish Sign Language, a test on the State and society, and proof that applicants can support themselves. The government's wording speaks of eight years "for most applicants". According to reports in the Irish Examiner, the residence requirement is to consist of two unbroken years immediately before the application and six years within the previous ten.
None of this is law. The General Scheme, the outline of the bill, has been published since 21 September 2026; by the end of October 2026 no bill had yet been introduced in parliament, and until the law comes into force today's rule applies. One point from the reporting is worth knowing, however: no transitional period is planned, and the new rule is to apply to everyone who has not applied by the time it comes into force. Years you have already lived in Ireland are to count towards the eight.
Portugal has shown how such things end. There the road was five years. Since 19 May 2026 it has been ten, and seven for EU citizens.
And now the caveat that belongs on the table anyway: the Minister has considerable discretion over naturalisation. You have no enforceable right to be naturalised just because your clock has reached a number. Anyone who sells you the Irish passport as a certainty is selling you something that does not exist.
The plain figures for today's procedure: the application fee is €175, and a successful naturalisation can cost up to a further €950. The median processing time stood at around eight months in March 2026, considerably shorter than the roughly two years before. A median is not a promise.
That is why this page no longer gives you a timeframe. It tells you what applies today, and it tells you what the General Scheme provides: two years of unbroken residence immediately before the application and six years in the ten years before that. The text contains no separate, shorter tier for EEA or Swiss citizens as Portugal has. For spouses of Irish citizens the residence period rises from three to five years.
Sources: Irish government press release of 9 September 2026; General Scheme of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2026, gov.ie, 21 September 2026 (Head 5 and Head 6); Irish Examiner of 7 and 8 September 2026; Organic Law No. 1/2026, Diário da República of 18 May 2026. This page as of 17 September 2026, General Scheme rechecked on 1 November 2026.
Perhaps you need not wait at all
Perhaps the most important question is not when you move to Ireland.
Perhaps it is: where was your grandmother born?
If you have an Irish grandparent, Foreign Births Registration, FBR for short, can be your road to Irish citizenship. No waiting time as a resident. No move. No shifting the centre of your life.
But this road has a trap, and it is the reason I do not treat it as a nice extra.
Through Foreign Births Registration you do not become an Irish citizen backdated to your birth. Citizenship arises, as a rule, on the day you are registered. If your child was born before you were registered, it cannot simply inherit citizenship through your later registration. You can still have a road to the Irish passport yourself and lose it for the next generation by waiting.
Processing currently runs, according to the underlying research, at about twelve months. Your child's date of birth does not wait for your decision.
That is why with every family I would check the family tree first. Before we even talk about years of residence.
What your old passport says
Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic countries have different rules on holding more than one citizenship.
For British citizens it is simple: the UK allows dual citizenship, and there is nothing to apply for. Belgium has allowed it since 28 April 2008, Sweden since 2001, Finland since 2003, Denmark since 2015 and Norway since 2020.
The Netherlands is a different case, and that is why I never put it in one sentence with the others. A Dutch adult who voluntarily acquires another nationality loses Dutch nationality by operation of law. The law makes exceptions, among them for anyone married to a citizen of the other country. And the loss can extend to minor children who share in the acquisition, unless the other parent remains Dutch.
On the Irish road by descent there is an open legal question that must not be answered with a guess. Whether and how the Dutch loss rule applies to exactly this situation is not answered on suspicion. Foreign Births Registration in particular has to be checked individually before anyone registers.
This is where the website ends.
This is where advice begins.
I would not bring my children to Ireland for a passport
I have lived in Ireland with my children myself. In 2014 I moved to Lismore in County Waterford with six children. My children went to the local schools there. They were taken in. We lived in an old Georgian house in the country.
So I can tell you quite clearly what I would not do: I would not have my children live for years somewhere we do not want to be, just so that a passport comes out at the end. That would be a miserable family strategy. The weather is too Irish for that. The housing market is too difficult for that. The taxes can be too high for that.
You should move to Ireland because the sum adds up for your family. If it does, the passport becomes the extraordinary bonus of that life. Then these years are no waiting time.
They are years of childhood.
Find out which door is open to your family today.
Perhaps your answer is: a life in Ireland. Perhaps: my grandmother. Perhaps you are Dutch, and we first have to establish what an application would put at risk. Or perhaps Ireland does not fit your life at all.
In a consultation with me we look at your citizenship, your family history, your children and at whether the road through residence or through descent makes sense for you at all. And if there is a road, you will know afterwards whether you should take it now.