Short-notice postponement of citizenship ceremony upended some people's plans. Could it have been avoided?

The prospect of Andrea Manning’s daughter travelling abroad for an internship hinged on the idea that she was going to be an Irish citizen in mid-April, said Manning.

Manning’s daughter – who’s 20 years old – had landed a work placement in the Netherlands through the Erasmus scheme, said her mum.

The programme offers a pathway to European young people to “study, train, gain experience, and volunteer abroad”, says the EU Commission website.

The placement was going to start on 1 July. Manning’s daughter would have had her Irish passport by then. 

And “she could freely work as an EU citizen”, Manning said. 

People get a certificate of naturalisation during their citizenship ceremony. They can use that to apply for an Irish passport, which takes “20 working days” to come through for first-time applicants, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs website.

Manning and her daughter had booked a hotel in Killarney, Co. Kerry, where the citizenship gala was slated to happen on 14 and 15 April, Manning said. 

But on Saturday, 11 April – amid blockades organised in response to soaring fuel prices triggered by the United States and Israeli governments’ war on Iran – would-be citizens got a missive from the Department of Justice apologising and saying it had to nix it.

“We are concerned that ongoing pressure on fuel, travel and transport services nationwide means that the event can’t go ahead this week,” said the message, which did not specifically blame the blockades.

Including people in the next “available ceremony, scheduled for June”, is a priority, said the email. 

A day later, RTÉ reported that the Gardaí had mostly cleared the streets of blockades. 

Manning and others believe that there were other solutions besides cancelling the citizenship ceremony.

For one, they could have switched to an online ceremony, like the ones held for people who were naturalised during the COVID-19 pandemic, they say.

Or they could have gone ahead and “those who couldn’t attend could have been given the option for the next ceremony”, Manning said.

“To cancel it till June was just so extreme,” she said. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it "regrets the postponement” because it knows how many people look forward to attending. 

But “it was considered that holding an event with more than 4,700 people taking part, many accompanied by friends or family, would add to pressure on transport”, they said.

It’s true that it has come up with alternative arrangements for these ceremonies “in exceptional circumstances and during the COVID-19 pandemic”, they said.

But it’s been holding them in real life since things went back to normal. And that’s its "preferred format for conferring citizenship”, the spokesperson said.   

They didn’t directly address a query asking whether this would also delay the event for another group who were originally going to be naturalised in June.

Almost there 

Meanwhile, RSVPing for the late June ceremony hasn’t been smooth for everyone. 

When the Department of Justice sent out a fresh invitation, some took to a Facebook group set up to help people navigate citizenship bureaucracy to say they couldn’t register.

They got an error which said, “This is a private event. We were unable to find your record in the invite list.”

It asked people to send an email requesting that their names be added to the docket.

Dauda Owoyomi, who became an Irish citizen two years ago, has stayed on the Facebook group to offer tips and support to others, he said.

Owoyomi said he believes the blockades and protests prompted the cancellations, and he gets how frustrating that must be. 

Manning, whose daughter was hoping to have her Irish passport for her Erasmus internship abroad, said that for her, it sort of felt like they were meant to get mad at the protestors. 

It’s unclear if the government was also worried about the safety of would-be citizens, as anti-immigrant organisers were also taking part in protests. 

Those influencers celebrated the cancellation of the citizenship ceremony as a win, online. 

Stephen Redmond, a National Party rep in Finglas, shared a headline announcing it on X, writing, “Maybe we should have more fuel protests”. It drew over 600 likes. 

Redmond and other members of the National Party had joined the protests all over the country, too.

The National Party, which advocates for “remigration” – now a cryptic term for forced deportation of non-White people regardless of their citizenship status   – wrote on X that essentially the protests were “not about fuel or about taxation but about trust”, and then, among other things, brought up anti-immigrant talking points.

Away from the crowds

Wendy Lyon, immigration solicitor at Abbey Law, said not everyone enjoys attending a huge in-person event anyway.

Lyon was naturalised before a District Court judge herself. She said that was just enough for her.

“A two month delay in naturalisation means a two month delay after that in getting an Irish passport,” she said.

There are people who may not have been able to travel outside Ireland for years. “Who thought they would finally be able to take a summer holiday, and may not be able to now,” she said.

At the very least, Lyon said, an alternative option should have been offered to people. 

Manning said they were lucky that the hotel in Killarney was accommodating and waived cancellation fees, but if her daughter can’t take up the placement, they are probably going to lose money on flights.

“This has caused such unnecessary stress and expense,” she said.