Laminated Birth Certificate - Irish Passport

Hi All,

After my Naturalisation on 26th Apr , today I went to the Passport office here in Cork to apply for Irish Passport, but they are not ready to accept my original birth certificate which is LAMINATED . They said that they cannot accept the Laminated Birth Certificate and it has to be "authenticated" by Indian Embassy Dublin.

Just wondering if anybody else have gone through the similar situation. Is there a way that Indian Embassy in Dublin can "authenticate" my original laminated birth certificate.

Any help here will be really appreciated.

Thanks

uberneo wrote:Hi All,

After my Naturalisation on 26th Apr , today I went to the Passport office here in Cork to apply for Irish Passport, but they are not ready to accept my original birth certificate which is LAMINATED . They said that they cannot accept the Laminated Birth Certificate and it has to be "authenticated" by Indian Embassy Dublin.

Just wondering if anybody else have gone through the similar situation. Is there a way that Indian Embassy in Dublin can "authenticate" my original laminated birth certificate.

Any help here will be really appreciated.

Thanks

I am afraid you have to ask them clearly whether they only accept foreign authenticated birth certificate without being laminated.

Ok , so I have just called the Indian embassy in Dublin ( they picked up the call after many attempts) . They said that there are 2 ways of doing this .

1) Firstly your original certificate needs to be attested by the local office from which my birth certificate is issued in India and the it needs to be attested by MEA Delhi and only then they can attest here.
This is crazy documentation and just delaying the whole process unnecessarily.

2) here they can issue something called as "Date of Birth Certificate" which again needs Garda card and i don't have any garda card since i already have Naturalisation certificate.

So if somehow if i managed to get "Date of Birth Certificate" from Embassy of India Dublin , will that be accepted by Passport office in Cork?

Thanks

Regarding acceptance of laminated certificates, no certificates are accepted in Ireland and few other countries if laminated, be it birth certificate, degree certificate, or whatsoever.

Regarding the acceptance of 'Date of Birth Certificate' issued at Indian Embassy, I have found from a different forum that for some the Date of Birth Certificate are accepted and for other not, by the Irish Passport Office. There is no clear evidence about the acceptance of 'Date of Birth Certificate' by Irish Passport Office. But in your case, as you are asked for Garda Card, have you explained Indian Embassy about your naturalisation and the possession of naturalisation certificate. Can't the naturalisation certificate suffice instead of Garda Card. This has to be considered only if the Passport Office Personnel dealing your case is happy with the DOB Certificate.

Whatever information you have got from the embassy about the attestation of the current laminated certificate, it is correct. It is the legal procedure that is prevalent in India.

Additionally, if you are from Kerala, the Kerala Government has a database of Birth Certificates available online for certification. In that case, you can just download a copy of Birth Certificate that could be verified online by Irish Passport Office.

You can also consider getting a new Birth Certificate in lieu of the laminated certificate from the concerned department rather than getting it attested. As far as I know getting attestation is a cumbersome process that involves a long time and various departments at various places. There are agencies that do this procedure too if you consider attestation; these agencies minimises your hardship for a nominal fee.

Thanks mCGIW for the response.

So today i went to Indian Embassy in dublin and have asked them to give me 'Date of Birth Certificate' , they are ok to accept Naturalisation certificate instead of Garda card.
Also they clearly said that they cannot attest any document as long as it already attested by MEA Delhi first.

Also getting a new Birth certificate from India will be very difficult for me.

So either i get me new birth certificate from India or get me current certificate attested by MEA Delhi , in both the case I physically need to go to India and now I can't do this as I don't have Garda card so they might catch me on my way back to Ireland.

There are agencies that do this procedure too if you consider attestation; these agencies minimises your hardship for a nominal fee.

Which agencies are these and how can I contact them.

So by next week I will get my 'Date of Birth Certificate' and hoping that this will get accepted at Passport office at Cork otherwise I will be totally helpless and don't know how to move further.

Also one thing which I didn't understand is that if INIS had accepted my birth certificate in laminated form then why passport office can't accept it. At the end of the day these are 2 Irish Govt departments.

Thanks

Ok so , today i again went to the passport office in Cork and they have accepted the "Date of Birth Certificate" given by Indian Embassy Dublin (took only 2 days to get it from Indian Embassy).

Also passport office in cork have kept my Original Birth Certificate as well which was laminated.

So i hope that i will get my passport soon.

Thanks

uberneo wrote:Which agencies are these and how can I contact them.

I have sent a PM to you about this.