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Workshop guide to gaining Irish citizenship


GETTING Irish citizenship is a milestone for emigrants and the Clare Immigrant Support Centre (CISC) has been involved in preparing a workshop on the matter, which will be given next week.
CISC and Doras Luimní are jointly hosting the workshop entitled Practical Guide to Citizenship Procedure, which will take place on Tuesday night from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at Pery’s Hotel, Glentworth Street, Limerick.
Orla Ní Eili of CISC said people applying would benefit from what’s on offer. “To apply for your citizenship in Ireland, you have to be here for a certain amount of years and fall into a certain category. It’s a very hard process and a lot of it has been quite unclear over the years, not very transparent. Now, there is a cost involved in applying so we’re trying to make sure that people apply with the best chance of success, by having everything that’s needed with all the details. There’s an application form that you fill and a lot of supporting documentation that must go with your application and €170.”
She said people who are in a position to apply will have lived in Ireland for some time already. “People that are eligible have already been living here for at least three years and many people who apply would have been here much longer than that. People maybe came here as refugees or immigrant workers, have been here a certain amount of time and value Ireland and their participation in Ireland. To become citizens for them is a big thing and changes how they fit into the world.”
There is little chance of people who arrived illegally becoming citizens, while she said the application process is rather complicated. “It’s very unlikely unless they were able to get a work permit but for most of them you need to be out of the country. It’s very hard to do that. In the last five months, there have been ceremonies to mark people getting citizenship in Dublin and in Cork and some people living in Clare, about 15 that I know of, went and participated in these events. The one in Cork had a few hundred people and in the next few months there’s one planned in Dublin for 3,000 people. It’s wonderful; it makes it into a big occasion. Before that, people just went to the court and there was nothing major about it.
“The reason we are running this particular event is that the application is very complicated and very costly. This is to support people to fill in the application properly and explaining some of the things that are needed. We will have someone coming down who will outline how to fill it in. We have people coming from the department to steer people correctly on the appropriate way to fill it in.”

 

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