We oppose these changes, all of them. If they go ahead, grandfathering is the bare minimum: everyone already living here keeps the five-year rule they came under.

Press blurb: The #keepitfive campaign is asking the Government to protect people who already live in Ireland and are counting towards citizenship under the five-year rule, before the Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2026 is written.

The General Scheme, published on 21 September, raises the residence requirement from five years to eight, and adds language and civics tests, an income floor and a welfare bar. The only people it protects are those whose applications are already lodged.⁶⁹ In the Minister’s own words: “If you have been here for four years and ten months by the time the laws are changed and commenced, it will affect you.”¹² On 5 October he said a “more generous scheme” for people already here was only “something that we’re considering”.⁷¹ Nothing has been published since, and applications jumped from 2,611 in August to 8,765 in September as people rushed to beat the change.⁷⁰

What we ask

• Grandfathering. Anyone living here before the law commences keeps the five-year rule they came under.
• Count the years people live here. Time on a student stamp or in international protection should count towards citizenship.
• Room for life. Maternity leave, caring, illness or disability should not break the income test.
• Show the evidence. No research or impact assessment has been published to explain why eight. Five years is still the rule in:
  • Germany, cut from eight in 2024: Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, § 10
  • France: Code civil, art. 21-17
  • Luxembourg: Loi du 8 mars 2017, art. 14

Two ways to look at it

People living here have written to their TDs, and 79 wrote back. Many were moved by what they heard: of the 123 TDs and Senators on the campaign’s board, 48 now say no to eight years or ask for a transition (where each one stands). Even on the Government’s own benches. “In my opinion, we do not need to increase it to eight years,” Barry Ward, a Fine Gael TD, told the Dáil on 30 September (the record).

• Against eight years
  • Barry Ward, Fine Gael, Dún Laoghaire
• Asking for a transition
  • James Geoghegan, Fine Gael, Dublin Bay South
  • Brian Brennan, Fine Gael, Wicklow-Wexford
  • Naoise Ó Muirí, Fine Gael, Dublin Bay North
  • Noel McCarthy, Fine Gael, Cork East
  • Michael Cahill, Fianna Fáil, Kerry
  • Séamus McGrath, Fianna Fáil, Cork South-Central
  • John Lahart, Fianna Fáil, Dublin South-West
  • Shane Moynihan, Fianna Fáil, Dublin Mid-West
  • Malcolm Byrne, Fianna Fáil, Wicklow-Wexford

For years the queue moved. In 2024 more people got their answer than applied,²⁶ and most waited about eight months.²⁸ Then the announcement came, and people who had been patiently counting their years rushed to apply before the door closed: 8,765 in September, three times as many as in August.⁷⁰ They are racing a deadline nobody has even set.

Since September the campaign has held six protests, two petitions have reached 19,935 signatures, and eleven organisations stand with it, among them the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council and the ICCL. The next protest is on Tuesday 3 November, 1–2pm, at the gates of Leinster House.

Visuals: protest photos, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube

Docs: the General Scheme, joint statement of 7 September, where the TDs stand, the Dáil record, every figure with its source

Individual statements