applying for irish citizenship with expired passport

Hi,

My wife is Thai living in Northern Ireland on a 5 year pre-settled status, in september she will have lived on the island of ireland for 3 years with her irish spouse(me)

We are hoping she can put in an apllication for citizenship soon after she has been here for 3 years, the only problem is her Thai passport will be expired then and she is pregnant so will be unable to get to london any time soon to get it renewed, now would be the perfect time to get it renewed but the Thai embassy is closed in london.

Will she need an in date passport to apply for irish citizenship?

Yes. She will need an in-date passport. Her in-date and previous passports both need to be sent in to start the application process.
She will also need to make sure that she has a valid permission for a continuous 365 days before she applies for citizenship, which usually means that she needs to have a valid passport and residence permit for this period.

littlerr wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:54 pm

Yes. She will need an in-date passport. Her in-date and previous passports both need to be sent in to start the application process.
She will also need to make sure that she has a valid permission for a continuous 365 days before she applies for citizenship, which usually means that she needs to have a valid passport and residence permit for this period.

Thank you littlerr

Ok so she will nedd an in date passport - hopefully we can get it done next month.

Can i ask what is " valid permission for a continuous 365 days before she applies"? would this be that she has to stay in Northern Ireland 365 days before she can apply or would it be ok to go to london next month to apply for new passport?

you say she needs a residence permit but she has uk pre-settled will this be ok for to apply for citizenship?

Thank you

I'm not familiar with the new UK statuses after Brexit. Essentially she just needs to make sure that she is living in the UK legally in the last 365 days prior to the application by a verifiable way (usually this means a stamp in the passport or a residence card or an official document from the officials).

In Ireland, the permission is given to the end of the passport expiry date, and needs to be renewed when a new passport is obtained. (So for example if your permission is valid for 5 years but your passport expires in 1 year, you will get a valid permission for only 1 year, and you need to re-apply for the remaining 4 years once you have a new passport.) Maybe the UK doesn't have this limitation.

And yes she can visit London or any country she likes, as long as the total absence time within any of the 3 years does not exceed 42 days.