Questions loom over Department of Justice’s account of long-held policy on citizenship rights of temporary asylum stamps

To officially stop Ukrainian refugees from using the time they have amassed here on temporary stamps to apply for Irish citizenship, the law must change. 

That’s because there isn’t anything in the Citizenship Act that keeps carves out an exception for temporary immigration stamp holders.

So, the government is seeking to overhaul the legislation to, among other things, make it the letter of the law that their time in Ireland so far isn’t any good for a future citizenship application.

Nevertheless, Colm Brophy, a Fine Gael junior minister at the Department of Justice says that even though it wasn’t in the law, it has always held that time on temporary stamps – granted for protection or not – can’t be banked for towards naturalisation. 

“It is existing policy that time spent in the State on permissions that are inherently transitionary or intended to be temporary in nature are not reckonable for the purpose of naturalisation,” Brophy told the Dáil, last year.

That’s not really true though.  Transient stamps sometimes do count for citizenship. Two years is the maximum time that a 1G graduate stamp lasts for its holder, for example.

Once it runs out, people have to move on to another permission to keep living here. But once they do, their time on Stamp 1G counts for citizenship. 

A technical difference is that Stamp 1G and others don’t come with the word “temporary” stitched before them. And they aren’t sanctuary permits. 

But back in the 1990s, another protection scheme bore the word "temporary". 

A 1995 survey from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) uses the term “temporary protection” to describe an ad-hoc scheme “outside the Irish immigration rules” – like the one for Ukrainian refugees – which allowed a relatively small group fleeing the Bosnian war to find shelter here. 

Their permission had to be renewed every year, it said – like that of Ukrainian refugees.

And its holders were “eligible under present rules to apply for Irish citizenship after 5 years of ordinary residence in Ireland,” said the report.

For some Ukrainian refugees, like Oleksandr Yurov and Denis Henesky, that’s proof that time on temporary protection counts, they said.

But a spokesperson for the Department of Justice disagreed. These were two “very different” schemes and shouldn’t be conflated, they said. 

One is through a European Union Directive activated in response to the war in Ukraine, the spokesperson said. 

The other was an ad-hoc “humanitarian temporary resettlement” programme from the 1990s which offered a safe haven to “people fleeing the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, they said.

As the EU Directive doesn't prescribe anything to member states on citizenship rights, it’s unclear how the different basis for the two programmes means one group’s time counted for citizenship and the other didn’t.

One difference though is simply that there have been significantly more Ukrainian refugees that those who were admitted back in the 1990s or through other programme refugee schemes.

And, says anthropologist and researcher Volha Biziukova, they have found themselves in need at a time when European governments have to varying degrees weaponised immigration to divert attention from governance failures.

Different wars, different rights

A year later after the UNHCR survey dropped, the Refugee Act 1996 acknowledged programme refugees.

But it did not change the fact that their time living in Ireland counted for citizenship. 

Besides, the Department of Justice wasn’t always asserting that time on temporary protection doesn’t count.

Its position – which also includes a change of heart on entitlements for Ukrainian refugees to government shelter and support with rent – has evolved and calcified as the war in Ukraine has worn on.

Back in October 2023, then-Minister for Justice Fine Gael’s Helen McEntee TD, did not explicitly say that Ukrainian refugees’ time on temporary asylum – or time on any temporary stamp – doesn’t count for citizenship.

But she told the Dáil that they won’t be able to clock in five years on the stamp anyway. She talks about the time “when the Directive is no longer active in March 2025”.

But as the Russian state did not relent in its assault on Ukraine, the scheme ran for longer and longer. 

Right now, it’s set to stay in place until March 2028. 

And as of 23 June 2026, more than 84,000 Ukrainian Refugees lived on temporary protection stamps, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).  

Meanwhile, the goverment has rolled out a temporary protection transition scheme for people to move on to other statuses if they want. That shuttles them on to a Stamp 4 immigration permission and permanent residency.

But it comes with a caveat. Seekers must make at least €29,432 a year to qualify and not be in receipt of any accommodation-related government aid including the shrinking accommodation recognition payment for those hosting refugees, at the time of application.

The income condition can especially impact stay-at-home mums, carers and disabled people.

The state's recent immigration policies and proposals seem to favour wealthier cohorts who haven't needed to fall back on social safety nets.

In a news release floating the proposals which make Irish citizenship harder to achieve, James O'Callaghan TD, Fianna Fáil's Minister for Justice suggested a link between “self-sufficiency” and “positive integration” .

"I have a responsibility to manage migration in the interests of the economic and social wellbeing of the country and to promote independence and self-sufficiency to support positive integration," he said.

Beyond the technical rationale that temporary protection derived from EU law is different from other temporary protection schemes, the government hasn't offered anything else to justify its exclusion from citizenship rights.

But the decisions is in step with Minister O'Callaghan's new policy proposals which make people's journey toward citizenship longer and bumpier.

Yurov, is a Ukrainian war veteran from the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk. He's also a left-wing activist who has joined the Irish Labour Party here, he said, recently.

He says the government's decision to make it harder for people like him to become Irish citizens marks his life in big and small ways.

“I do not have a normal safe home to return to,” he said. And there are lots of people like him in Ireland, Yurov said.

Some are war vets, he said, others vulnerable because of their age or disability. Saying the two schemes were different, is a "classic deflection", he said.

“It does not change the substance, one group of war refugees had their time recognised; another group is having it zeroed out while being pushed toward conditions designed for economic migrants,” Yurov said.

A rapid decline 

Yurov said he is especially hurt by the opposition party Sinn Féin whose TDs have been campaigning for a downgrade of support for Ukrainian refugees. It felt like being singled out and unfairly blamed for the affordable housing crisis, he said.

Alongside her colleagues, Biziukova, ghe anthropologist who is also a research fellow at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, has looked at the “un/making” of protection for Ukrainian refugees in Austria in a recent paper.

“While casually referred to as refugees, Ukrainians were never able to substantively claim this status and its associated rights,” the paper says.

They found that support for Ukrainian refugees in Austria also dwindled, said Biziukova on a video call, recently. She is currently in Ukraine for on-the-ground research. 

“Government underperformance” is among the factors breaking ground for the rise of extremist “illiberal” movements in Europe, according to another new study, by researchers in Romania, delving into weaponisation of Ukrainian war refugees for political gain.

“Good governance, public goods, and inclusive leadership” can stall that trajectory, it said. 

But in the current climate, said Biziukova, empathy for the experiences of forced migration and other vulnerabilities that cloud the life of refugees were no longer extended to those seeking safety from Ukraine. 

It was replaced with the growing expectation of becoming economically productive – “these are not labour migrants” – or going back.

Said Yurov, the Ukrainian refugees: “Ukrainians who were given temporary protection as war refugees are increasingly being treated in practice like labour migrants.”

That some parts of Ukraine are safe and fine to live in when the prospect of “occupation” hangs over the entire nation, Biziukova said – a sentiment also echoed by Sinn Féin here.

“If a beneficiary of Temporary Protection is from a part of Ukraine that is safe, then supports to allow people to return home should be put in place,” said the party spokesperson for migration and Justice Matt Carthy TD, last year. 

It’s been a fast decline, said Biziukova. Even in Austria, the country she’d centred her research on, she said, she can’t keep up with ever-changing policies.

As others have said, Biziukova also points to how blurring their path forward doubly impacts women refugees from Ukraine, who may be both mothers and workers. Five years is a long time to be away, said Biziukova.

Henesky, the oher Ukrainian refugee in Dublin, said he’s stressed these days “because of all the news”. 

He's too cast down to meet up, he said.

Instead, he sent a letter, outlining why he believes people like him should be able to bank their time so far in Ireland – and the life they have been building on it –  towards a stable future. 

Yurov, the other man, said if it's true that time on temporary protection never counted then the law wouldn't need to change to box people out.

Excluding people like that while making a transition to another stamp conditioned on income-levels, only pushes people to the margins, Yurov said. “From a social policy perspective, that is extremely difficult to justify.”

To restore social health, said Biziukova, the researcher, is to avoid leaving anyone behind.

“Rights and equal participation for everyone, not only for displaced people and migrants, but for society at large,” she said.