Clarifying my understanding UK citizen naturalising with Irish spouse

Hi all,

I'm Northern Irish and my spouse is British. We'd like to get him an Irish passport too (I've already got mine).

We're considering buying a place in Northern Ireland and living there to meet the requirements of 3 years.

Am I right that as a UK citizen we don't have to use the 'reckonable residence' process. Is it then the case that we just need to send three documents to represent each year that we spent in Northern Ireland? And that for the final year we have to provide bank statements for 3 of the final 6 months?

I'm not sure exactly what the requirements are if we spend more than 6 weeks outside in the final year, as we travel a lot.

Yes all your assumptions are correct.

You can leave for more than 6 weeks per year but you will need to exclude the entirety of the absences if they are over 6 weeks when calculating reckonable residences. You should also try to limit the number of days abroad to 6 weeks for the last 365 days prior to making the application.

Thanks, but to be clear I wouldn't actually have to calculate reckonable residence?

I don't think I've ever spent 46 weeks in any country recently. Do they really care and check?

Of course you will have to calculate your reckonable residences. If you don't think you can live in Northern Ireland for the next 3 years, with a bank account that you use on a daily basis, there is absolutely no point applying for it. You will need to declare the dates in the application and make a statutory declaration. Making a deliberate false declaration is a serious offence and may result in a 3000 euro and/or 12 month imprisonment, and up to 5 years if convicted in court.

There are multiple ways for them to check your residence and they will carry out every single check, often multiple times.
- You will be required to submit bank statements for all your accounts, and INIS will usually ask you to submit a random period of bank statements. It will be easy enough for them to identify whether you live in the said address by checking the transaction details.
- You will be required to submit a tax clearance certificate and INIS will be able to verify with the UK counterpart to verify from which address you are working & paying taxes.
- Ireland and the UK share immigration details. INIS will have details for every single flight and ferry trip that you have made.