Naturalisation and oldest son

[luckycat007]

Hello,

I will be applying for Irish citizenship in a week, having been in Ireland for 5 years. I arrived with my family, wife and 3 children on 4 August 2013.

First question: Eldest son

I don't think my application or my wife's will be an issue, or my two youngest sons who will file under me as dependents. However my oldest son had to return to our home state (Michigan, USA) for 5 months to complete his secondary school education, in 2014, and returned to live with us and attend university. He's been on a student visa stamp 2, allowing him to work.

While he arrived as a dependent under my visa in 2013, and the reckonable years of service calculator says to use MY GNIB stamp #s, which indicates he'll be ready to apply at the same time as me (6 August 2018), do we need to push back his date 5 months?

IF SO, he turns 24 on 27 January, so after the 5 months window he'll be an adult, and as far as we can tell unable to file under me as a dependent to obtain citizenship.

Or should we file his based on GNIB stamps, and in the section of the application that asks if he's been out of the country for 6 weeks or more explain the situation - that while his family remained in Ireland he could not complete his secondary education here and returned to the US to complete high school (living with my parents).

There is also no US stamp on entry of course in his Irish passport, only two return dates from his travels back to the US.

Second question - filing together

In general - if we all arrived in the State on the same date, should I simply file all of our applications at once, in one packet? My wife is offset, in theory, by about 10 days because she was in the US just before her GNIB stamp expired, so when she returned she made an appt at GNIB but the first available date was after her GNIB expiration date resulting in a gap between days.

However if we file at the same time as a family unit will that matter?

[luckycat007]

Just bumping up...