Irish in UK reveal deportation fears

The biggest umbrella group for the Irish in Britain has told how many elderly people living there fear deportation in the wake of Brexit.

Irish in Britain represents more than 100 Irish clubs and organisations around England. It has been flooded with requests for applications for Irish passports over the past year.

An RTÉ documentary, The Thin Green Line, reveals there are currently 40 applications a day for Irish citizenship under the grandparent rule, which could bring applications through foreign-birth registration to nearly 15,000 by the end of the year.

At present, there are an estimated 700,000 people born in Ireland who are living or working across the water.

Mary Tilki, from the Irish in Britain group, told the RTÉ series of the very real fears held by many of their Irish diaspora in relation to Britain’s exit from the EU.

“People are very worried. The older population, some of them were very distressed in the early weeks following the vote that maybe they were going to be sent back to Ireland,” she said.

“We represent about 100 organisations throughout England and have been inundated with requests for passport application forms and the queries that go with them.”

In London, the Irish embassy is currently dealing with the Brexit fallout and the surge in demand from British people to hold on to their freedom of travel through Europe by applying for Irish passports.

“In 2015, which was a normal year, we had 600 people applying for foreign birth registration to become Irish citizens. Since June of last year, we’ve had 6,000, but the number of people in Britain eligible for foreign birth registration is probably in the millions,” said Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to Britain.

The Thin Green Line, RTÉ One, 7pm, September 7