The number of Irish passport applications by British citizens has almost doubled since June’s vote to leave the European Union and the rate of enquiries is continuing to accelerate, Ireland’s foreign office said on Wednesday.
Anybody born in the Irish Republic or Northern Ireland, or with an Irish parent or grandparent, is entitled to an Irish passport — a total of about six million British citizens. They are able to hold dual citizenship.
Post offices ran out of passport forms and embassies fielded thousands of calls in the days following the June 23 vote and data on Wednesday showed 21,500 Britons have applied since July compared to just under 11,000 in the same period a year ago.
Applications by Britons trying to hang onto EU citizenship via a passport from their nearest neighbor have increased each month since the vote and rose 120 percent year-on-year in September, the foreign office said.
Registrations for Irish passports in Northern Ireland, whose citizens can hold both an Irish and British passport as the province is part of the United Kingdom, rose by 68 percent over the same three-month period.
Separately, a lawyer representing the Irish government told a court hearing on Wednesday that It is not “illegitimate” for Britain’s prime minister to begin the process of leaving the EU without parliamentary approval.
A cross-party group of politicians, including members of the British province’s two largest Irish nationalist parties, has brought a High Court challenge of plans to leave the EU, arguing that a vote in the Northern Ireland regional assembly should also be required.
Lawyers for the British government, which plans to start the two-year countdown to exiting the EU by March next year, have said that it is the prerogative of the prime minister to do so and the process does not require a vote in Parliament.
“Giving effect to the referendum decision... and vote is classically within the area of prerogative power,” lawyer Tony McGleenan, representing Britain’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, told the Belfast court.
“It is not illegitimate, unorthodox or undemocratic,” he said, adding that the United Kingdom joined the EU in 1973 by prerogative power and can withdraw in the same way.

Source: Arab News