ROI citizenship - 6 weeks rule (EU citizen)

Hi all,

I'm specifying EU citizen in the title for 2 reasons:
* I am not required to use the calculator;
* for trips within EU, I don't have stamps in my passport.

I've looked into multiple threads but I still can't exactly wrap my head around how the 6 weeks rule works and the official documentation didn't help in clarifying certain doubts.

So, in my case, I meet the 6 weeks requirements in the current year and would like to apply for IE citizenship sometime in Jan/Feb.
However, I don't meet the requirement in any of the previous years as I could work from home and always spent a few weeks home in summer (did the same this year, but that was my only trip due to Covid).

I was somehow lucky that I managed to keep most of my flight reservations in my inbox or managed to retrieve few others from a tool that is used in my company for work-related trips expenses.
However, as an EU citizen, I have stamps in my passport only for the few times I went outside of the EU (4-5 times overall, mostly for work in US).

Questions:
* I understand from other threads that I need to discount the full time I was out of country for any year where the 6 weeks were exceeded (which seems absurd, but what can we do ...). So let's say that I was outside of the country for 7 weeks in 2019, so these are 7 weeks that I'm missing in my count to reach the golden peak of 1,460 days in the past 8 years. Some questions on this:
- if I was outside of ROI for work, is it safe to say that I'll get a pass for this time as I read on other threads?
- if this bring my count for the year below 6 weeks, will the whole year be accountable for then?
- I understand correctly that days of trip shouldn't be counted? So, if my flight from Ireland was, let's say, on the 1st of Oct. 2019, and my flight back was on the 10th Oct., then as date of absence I would enter 2nd Oct to 9th Oct, is this correct?

* Shall I provide copies of flight/hotel reservations? What happens if I don't have this type of documentation for all trips?

* What happens if I can't find reservation details? Shall I provide approximate dates?

* What happens if I miss to mention a trip outside of ROI? E.g. I might not have any details for trips to Northern Ireland and few times I would have gone for a day trip to Belfast or Giant's Causeway. How am I supposed to retrieve those details? The same might apply to trips within EU in 2014/2015 as it becomes difficult to retrieve exact details so far back.

Any help in clarifying these points would be greatly appreciated!

- if I was outside of ROI for work, is it safe to say that I'll get a pass for this time as I read on other threads?
Small excess of work related travels (i.e. business trips) are fine, but if you are simply working from home from abroad, no.

- if this bring my count for the year below 6 weeks, will the whole year be accountable for then?
See above.

- I understand correctly that days of trip shouldn't be counted? So, if my flight from Ireland was, let's say, on the 1st of Oct. 2019, and my flight back was on the 10th Oct., then as date of absence I would enter 2nd Oct to 9th Oct, is this correct?
Correct.

* Shall I provide copies of flight/hotel reservations? What happens if I don't have this type of documentation for all trips?
No (unless you are proving that your trips are for business purposes or on other medical or humanitarian grounds).

* What happens if I can't find reservation details? Shall I provide approximate dates?
Yes use approximate dates. Just put a note in your application declaring that they are approximate.

* What happens if I miss to mention a trip outside of ROI? E.g. I might not have any details for trips to Northern Ireland and few times I would have gone for a day trip to Belfast or Giant's Causeway. How am I supposed to retrieve those details? The same might apply to trips within EU in 2014/2015 as it becomes difficult to retrieve exact details so far back.
Use approximate days for trips that are outside of the island of Ireland. Day trips to Northern Ireland cannot be traced anyway (unless you have a LOT of them - in which case you will need to declare them in your application).

Thanks great, thanks a lot!