In this urgent article, I bring you breaking news that affects some Irish citizens. Protecting your Irish Citizenship is crucial, and failing to take action could result in its revocation. Don’t risk losing everything you hold dear – complete the necessary form mentioned here immediately! Irish Citizenship is a valuable asset that grants you numerous rights, including the ability to live, work, and travel freely within the European Union

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Breaking news! If you’re an Irish Citizen your nationality and your passport may be at risk!

If you want to protect your Irish Citizenship, you must act now!

What do I have to do?

I’m going to tell you about a mandatory form that some Irish Citizens must fill out to safeguard their citizenship.  Failure to complete this form constitutes a serious risk of having your citizenship taken away.

Is this a new thing?

No, but it’s not very well known, and I’ve checked with the Irish Embassy in Spain and the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ireland to get the correct information, so that you can take proactive steps to protect your citizenship and your passport, which is such a valuable asset and grants you numerous rights, including the ability to live, work and travel freely within the European Union.

Which form is it?

There’s a link HERE so you can download it once you’ve finished reading, I’ll show you before that what it looks like, and I’ll take you through the process of how to fill it in, where to take it to make it official, and where to send it. 

Is it all Irish Citizens that need to fill in the form?

No, but it would be very helpful if all Irish Citizens knew about it so they can tell the ones that need to fill in the form. 

Excellent idea! So which ones need to fill in the form?

It’s people like me, we’re called Naturalised Irish Citizens.

What is a Naturalised Citizen?

A Naturalised Irish Citizen is someone who wasn’t born in Ireland and doesn’t have Irish parents or grandparents, but they did live in Ireland for long enough to claim Irish Citizenship. Once I went through the naturalisation process and got my certificate and passport, I was officially an Irish Citizen.

Did you have to fill in this form straight away?

Not quite, there’s another important factor to consider. You see, the form is called Declaration of intention to retain Irish Citizenship by a naturalised Irish Citizen residing outside Ireland.

So it’s only for Naturalised Citizens who become officially resident in another country?

Correct.

How do I fill in the form?

At the moment, in 2023, the form looks like this

It’s important to make sure you fill in the up to date version. Last year’s form was slightly different, and it says on the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs website that if you send in the wrong version of the form you’ll get it sent back to you. So you should download a new one each year rather than saving the present form to your computer and printing it out each year.

Does it cost you to do this form?

Yes, I’ll come to that in a minute, but let’s go through the form first.

The Form is called the CTZ2. The first 4 pages are the notes to help you fill it in, so here’s page 5 where you need to start writing.

Section 1 – Declaration

This is for ‘the declarant’, that’s you.  Note that it says you must use BLOCK CAPITALS to fill in the form, except for the signatures of course. It also says you must fill in your details in the presence of a witness who is either a notary public, commissioner for oaths, solicitor, or a peace commissioner and authorised to take and receive statutory declarations, which is why it costs money. The cost will depend on who you get to witness the form. 

One more note here, make sure the date on this page matches the one that the witness puts in their section later on.

So you write

• Your name in capitals
• Your signature
• The date
• Your current address

Next page.

Section 2 – Witness details

Let’s assume your witness is a notary. If you’re in Spain like me, there’s always a notary nearby. 

They need to put

• Their name (nombre & apellido)
• Their title (in this case it would be Notary)
• Your name. 

Next page.

Section 2A – How the witness knows the declarant

There are three options here, so you’ll need to tick whichever one of these 2A boxes is relevant. 

• If the notary knows you personally, they tick 2A.1.

• If you were identified to them by someone they know personally they tick 2A.2. 

• If you prove your identity by producing one of the 3 documents listed here, they tick 2A.3.

Let’s assume you’re going to use your beautiful Irish passport – tick box 2A.3 – then, in the other boxes, you fill in

• Your passport number
• The date of issue which is on the main page of your passport with your picture
• The issuing state, which is Ireland. 

Next page!

Section 2B – Witness Details

This is also for the notary to fill in. They fill in

• ‘Witnessed at’ = the village, town or city where the notary office is
• The date (that’s the one that must match the one on page 5)
• Their signature
• Their name in capitals
• The address of the notary’s office
• The office phone number
• Their official notary stamp.

HELPFUL HINT if your Spanish isn’t very good, or if the notary’s English isn’t very good, it’s worth having a translator with you, or some notes written in Spanish so that the notary is clear what they need to put in each box and what the English words all mean on the form. Make sure to ask them to write in BLOCK CAPITALS. I’m sure you’ll find them grateful for making their job easier. Look at it from their point of view.

Next page

Section 2C – Declarant details

This part you can fill in at home if you want, that’ll save time when you’re at the notary office.

You’ll need your naturalisation certificate for this, and I would take it with you to the notary office in case they want to check it as well.

In Declarant details, fill in:

• Your name as it appears on your certificate.
• Your date of birth.
• Your certificate number.
• The date of issue of the certificate.
• Your official date of residence  outside of Ireland (for us that would be the date on our EU residency card).
• The date you last filled in one of these forms if it’s not your first time, so you should keep a note of that whenever you fill in the form.
• Your email address
• Your phone number. Make sure you put the country code on there as well, which is 0034 for Spain.

Where do I send it to?

First of all, scan it into your computer and keep the file safe, and make sure to keep the paper copy.

Then you email the scanned document to the address in the notes section of the form, which on this year’s form is citizenshipdeclarations@justice.ie

Last year I had to post it by snail mail, so that’s all changed for the better.

What happens if I don’t do a declaration every year?

Well, that’s a very good question to which I don’t yet have a definitive answer, but here’s a shorter version of what it says in the notes to the form.

Section 19 (1) (c) of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, says that the Minister for Justice and Equality may revoke a certificate of naturalisation if he is satisfied that the person to whom it is granted has been ordinarily resident outside the State for a continuous period of seven years, and without reasonable excuse has not during that period registered annually their name and a declaration of their intention to retain Irish citizenship with an Irish diplomatic mission or consular office or with the Minister. 

So they ‘MAY’ revoke your citizenship?

Yes. And it doesn’t give any details to explain what might trigger that decision, which is a bit vague. I did ask at the Irish Embassy in Madrid, but they couldn’t give any more information. 

I’ve sent a message to ask the Minister for Justice. And if you’re reading this, Minister, get in touch, it would be a privilege to have you on the live show one Saturday to talk about this and anything else to do with Irish Citizenship. There are tens of thousands of people reading these blogs and watching the videos I’ve made on the subject, so use this opportunity to get your message across.

Any questions? Then ask in the comments below, or ask the experts live on Saturday mornings.

Peace & Love! Let’s dance!

Article by Skatz

Useful websites:

Department of Foreign Affairs website, Ireland

Irish immigration website (where you can download the form to retain Irish Citizenship)