Country by country
Irish citizenship by descent for Americans
Pick the relative who was born in Ireland and say whether your parent was registered before your birth: the tool names your route, fee and wait.
Can you register as Irish, and what does it cost?
Under the rules in force on October 25, 2026
Likely eligible
| Route | Foreign Births Register |
| Registration fee | €278 |
| Published wait | About 12 months, in date order |
A grandparent born on the island of Ireland lets you register in the Foreign Births Register; you are Irish from the date of registration.
Irish citizenship by descent rests on one question: who in your family was born on the island of Ireland, which includes Northern Ireland. If it was your parent, and that parent was an Irish citizen when you were born, you are already Irish and you simply apply for a passport. If it was a grandparent, you can become Irish by entering your birth in the Foreign Births Register, run online by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin. Your parent does not need to be registered or to hold a passport, and there is no age limit or deadline. A great-grandparent counts only when your parent was entered in the register before you were born; a later registration does not reach you. The fee is €278 for an adult and €153 for a child under 18, postage included, and the Department states a wait of about 12 months, handled in strict date order. Ireland lets you keep US citizenship.
What will the file cost?
US side of the file
$151
| 5 certified records (2 births, 2 marriages, 1 deaths) | $126 |
| Apostilles (not required) | $0 |
| Naturalization proof | $25 |
| Translations (English accepted) | $0 |
| Ireland fee | €278 |
The Ireland fee is paid in EUR and is not added to the dollar total. Records from the old country are not counted: they are ordered there.
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Who qualifies, generation by generation
| Relative born on the island of Ireland | Your status | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Parent (an Irish citizen when you were born) | Irish from birth | Apply for a passport |
| Grandparent | Can register | Foreign Births Register |
| Great-grandparent, parent registered before your birth | Can register | Foreign Births Register |
| Great-grandparent, parent not registered in time | No right | Discretionary naturalization only |
The 1956 Act draws a clear line. A person born abroad to an Irish citizen who was born in Ireland is Irish automatically, with nothing to register. A person born abroad to an Irish citizen who was themselves born abroad is entitled to Irish citizenship but must claim it by registration. That second rule is what opens the door to grandchildren: your parent, born in the United States to an Irish-born mother or father, was an Irish citizen at your birth even without a passport, so you can register.
The same mechanism explains the great-grandparent rule. Your grandparent, born abroad, became Irish only on the day of registration. If your parent registered before you were born, your parent was an Irish citizen at your birth and you can register in turn. If your parent registered after your birth, you were born to a non-citizen and the chain stops. The Citizens Information guide spells out the same point for expectant parents, who should mention a pregnancy on their own application.
The Department's guidance draws no distinction between an Irish-born grandmother and an Irish-born grandfather, and asks for proof of each family link through civil records. There is no language test, no residence requirement, no oath and no age limit, which is why the register is often the most direct European route open to Americans.
How the Foreign Births Register works
Everything starts online on the Department of Foreign Affairs site. You fill in the form, pay by card, print the completed form and have it signed by a witness who is not a relative. The witness also signs two of your four passport photos and certifies a copy of your photo ID. Police officers, teachers, doctors, nurses, notaries and bank managers are among the professions the Department accepts. You then post the printed form and the original documents by tracked mail to the address shown on the form. The originals come back by registered post once the file is processed.
No consulate decides your file and there is no interview. The Foreign Births Registration section in Dublin checks the documents, enters your birth in the register and mails you a Foreign Birth Registration certificate. With that certificate in hand, you can apply for an Irish passport.
Can you register as Irish, and what does it cost?
Under the rules in force on October 25, 2026
Likely eligible
| Route | Foreign Births Register |
| Registration fee | €278 |
| Published wait | About 12 months, in date order |
A grandparent born on the island of Ireland lets you register in the Foreign Births Register; you are Irish from the date of registration.
Documents to gather
The file follows the line from the Irish-born ancestor down to you. For the grandparent route you send, for yourself, your long-form birth certificate showing your parents, your marriage certificate if your name changed, a certified copy of your photo ID and two proofs of address. For your parent, the link, you send the long-form birth certificate, a marriage certificate or name-change record if relevant, and a certified copy of photo ID, or a death certificate if your parent has died. For the grandparent born in Ireland you send the Irish civil birth certificate, the marriage certificate and photo ID or a death certificate. Children under 18 add a letter from a school or family doctor showing their address.
The Department's list does not ask for apostilles on US records. US records are in English, so no translation is needed. What it insists on is originals: civil certificates issued by the state vital records office, not hospital certificates or church records, except the pre-1864 baptism case. Copies, where allowed, carry a signed statement that they are true copies of the original. The US records guide explains how to order long-form certificates from each state, and the cost calculator prices them.
Fee and waiting time
The fee is €278 for an applicant aged 18 or over and €153 for a child, both including the postage that returns your originals (Department of Foreign Affairs). It is paid online when you submit the form, per person: a parent and two children registering together pay three fees. The Irish passport is a separate application with its own fee once the registration is done.
The Department gives a processing time of about 12 months for a complete application and works in strict date order, so a file posted today joins the back of the queue. The page carries no update date, so treat the figure as the Department's current estimate rather than a promise. The Irish dual citizenship page sets out what each family member pays and receives.
Keeping your US citizenship
Ireland does not ask you to give up any other citizenship: Citizens Information states that Ireland allows dual citizenship. The United States does not require you to choose either; the US position on dual citizenship explains why taking a second nationality does not put your US passport at risk. You enter and leave the United States on your US passport. Once Irish, you are also an EU citizen, free to live and work across the European Union. The country-by-country table compares Ireland with the other routes, and the tax page covers what US filing rules still apply when you open an account in Dublin.
When the line does not fit
If your Irish-born relative is further back than a grandparent and your parent never registered, the register is closed to you. Naturalization on the basis of Irish associations exists, but it is a discretionary decision of the Minister for Justice, with no published list of who qualifies. Living in Ireland for the standard residence period is the other path. The family tree checker can test the same line against the other countries where your family may have roots, and the second passport guide compares what each route asks of you.