More than 3.6k Irish passport applications were made by Americans in November

More people in the US are seeking to become Irish citizens, according to a report from RTÉ News on Friday, February 7.

There were 31,825 Irish passport applications from the US in 2024, an increase of 9.7% on the previous year.

Last November - the same month as the 2024 US Presidential election - saw the highest number of Irish passport application from the US in a calendar month in the ten years worth of figures supplied to RTÉ News.

There were 3,692 Irish passport applications made in the US in November 2024, RTÉ News reported on Friday.

On November 6, 2024, the day after Americans went to the polls for the US Presidential election, there were spikes on Google in the US for searches of "Irish passport" and "Irish citizenship."

In order to get an Irish passport, you must be an Irish citizen.

You are automatically an Irish citizen if one of your parents was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, and was born on the island of Ireland. You don't need to apply to become an Irish citizen in this case.

If you were born outside of Ireland, you can become an Irish citizen if one of your grandparents was born in Ireland, or one of your parents was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, even though they were not born in Ireland.

In these cases, you can become an Irish citizen through Foreign Birth Registration.

RTÉ News reported on Friday that in 2023, there were 7,726 Foreign Birth Registrations in the US. This figure increased to 11,601 in 2024, which accounted for 27% of all the Foreign Birth Registrations last year.

Once a person is entered onto Ireland's Foreign Births Register, they are an Irish citizen and entitled to apply for an Irish passport.