After the decision of the UK to leave the EU, an increasing number of British citizens have applied for Irish citizenship to secure the status of EU citizenship. Compared to the period between January and July 2015, the number of applications for citizenship to the Irish passport office has increased by 11 per cent. Most of the new applicants are residents in Northern Ireland (7,045) and Great Britain (5,719).

According to the 2011 census, 407,000 in the UK are Irish citizens by descent from parents or grandparents born in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. In some cases, in order to establish their citizenship, they will first need to enter their names on the register of foreign births. But for many people asserting their Irish citizenship which has been dormant is simply a matter of applying for an Irish passport.

Read more in the Sunday Business Post and The Journal, the opinion pieces on the effects of this trend in Irish Times here and here, as well as a recent analysis in Bloomberg.

For more information on the current and past citizenship legislation in Ireland, consult our country profile pages.