Homeport Sources checked · 15 Sep 2026

Irish citizenship through a grandparent born on the island.

Eight questions, and you see the rule, the records, the fee and the wait.

How the Foreign Births Register actually works

  • It is a register, not a test. Section 27 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 creates it. You are entered on a list held in Dublin, and citizenship runs from the date of that entry.
  • A grandparent born on the island is the main line. Born outside Ireland, to a parent also born outside Ireland, with a grandparent born on the island: that is the classic application.
  • The island includes Northern Ireland. A grandparent born in Belfast counts exactly as one born in Cork. The certificate comes from a different office, that is all.
  • A parent born on the island is a different road. You are already a citizen and apply for a passport instead. The Department says so in those words.
  • The date of registration is the hinge. Children born before a parent registered are not entitled to apply. Children born after that registration are.

The 278 euro goes to Dublin. We never apply for anyone.

  • The state fee is 278 euro for an adult. 270 euro for the registration and certificate, plus 8 euro postage and handling that is not returned. A child under 18 is 145 euro plus the same 8 euro, 153 euro in all.
  • You pay it, and you pay it to the Department. It is taken online at the moment you submit. It never passes through us and we add nothing to it.
  • We do not file the application, and we will not. The person who signs that form makes the declaration on it, and that has to be the applicant.
  • The Department warns about paid third party sites. It says such sites are not connected to it in any way. We are not connected to it either, and this page says so rather than letting you find out later.
  • What we sell is a record, not a place in a queue. Records are the thing the Department does not provide. Speed is the thing nobody can sell.

The wait is about twelve months, and there is no tracker

  • The published figure today is about twelve months. The Department states that applications are processed in strict date order.
  • There is no online tracking of any kind. The passport tracker does not cover the register, and a status query comes back with that same twelve month figure.
  • Applicants track it themselves. The community keeps a shared spreadsheet of real decision times because nothing official exists.
  • An urgent application exists in two cases only. A parent expecting a child before the file is reached, or a risk of statelessness. There is no paid fast lane.
  • Finish the check above and the queue block does the arithmetic on the month you submitted, and emails you once a month.

The record the whole file rests on

Every route above starts with one Irish birth certificate: the one belonging to the person born on the island. It is 20 euro from the General Register Office, and the free civil index runs to 1924 with a photograph of the register page. When the county, the year or the spelling is not in the family memory, that is the search we do.

Find my ancestor's birth record, 149 dollars

Record not found, our fee comes back. The 20 euro state fee is charged by the issuing office, never by us.

Homeport is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. This page shows a rule published by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the records that rule asks for. We are not connected to the Department in any way, and we never submit an application for anyone. Decisions are made by the Department alone. The official page is at ireland.ie.