Muttsnuts wrote:doesnotcompute wrote:Hi,
Like ciaramc, I am also an Irish citizen excercising my Treaty Rights abroad, and I will be returning to Ireland with my non-EU spouse in less than 3 months. I would be very interested to know how you get on, ciaramc.
What I'd like to know is - when my wife sends the EU1 application (along with her passport, etc), do the Treaty Rights section send her passport back to her, when they send the letter that tells her when/how/where to apply for her temporary immigration stamp? I presume they do, I just want to get things clear in my head, as the info is hard to come by.
Also, when we arrive at the airport, do we have to explicitly tell the Garda that we plan to use the Surrinder Singh route? Do we have to mention anything about Treaty Rights, or is it that likely to affect his/her decision as to how many days to give my spouse on her entry stamp?
Does your spouse have an EU Residency card for the country you are currently residing in? If so then both of you will be able to enter the State without any visa or trouble and your spouse should be granted 90 days. No need to mention anything about Surinder SIngh which the GNIB Garda wouldn't have a clue about anyway!
Just to update you all on this:
I spoke to the Visa Office in London about this. Aparently, the statuatory instrument in question, SI 146 of 2011, states that non-nationals holding an EU Residence card of a family memeber of a Union Citizen are exempt from having to apply for a seperate Irish visa. HOWEVER, because the British Home Office use the wording "family member of an
EEA national" on their residence cards, then it is not necessarily the same thing as the family member of a Union citizen.
Because the wording that is used on the British EU Residence Card doesn't exactly match the wording in the SI, then you run the risk of being refused entry, and the Dept of Justice haven't given the Visa Office any advice on how to deal with such cases. They said we could try to enter the State using the EU Residence Card issued by the Home Office, but we run the risk of the immigration officer not accepting the Residence Card, and therefore being refused for not having a valid Irish visa. Ridiculous!