UK/Irish Dual Citizen w/ Non-EEA Spouse

[a.h.james]

Advice please.

I am, as stated, a UK/Irish Dual Citizen with a Non-EEA Spouse, who is currently living in Central America. We are considering whether to try and spend some extended time in the UK together and are trying to figure out if there is a simple (which I have begun to strongly doubt) route for us to do so without all the hoo-haa of visas.

All of my immediate family is there and what we would ideally like to do is stay with some of them until such time as I or the both of us have (a) job(s) and can arrange our own place. At present we have nothing lined up in terms of jobs and I don't believe we would currently be practically able to arrange something from outside the UK. Needless to say the financial requirement for a UK spouse visa is something we don't even remotely have available to us, so that route is out of the question and will continue to be, short of me living there without her for at least six months (which I do not want to do) after having found a job that pays such an amount. Equally, we don't have a job available to us that she could apply for from where we would be able to get her another type of visa.

My father is an Irish citizen and I therefore also have Irish citizenship, so next time I am in the UK I was planning to get myself an Irish Passport sorted out. As such, I am trying to understand the freedom of movement for Non-EEA family members to join their EU spouses. From what I can gather from random online sources as the result of googling (although please correct me if I am wrong on this), I could not (at some point in the post-Irish-passport-getting-future) roll up to the border with her, present my Irish passport and expect her to be allowed in under EU freedom of movement family member rules, because the UK decided that my UK citizenship would mean my other-EU-state status was now for some reason basically non-existent. So is this route unavailable to me?

I am unsure of the reverse situation. If I enter Ireland (where I have some extended family) with my UK passport and my wife will she be allowed in on the freedom of movement rules? Or do they have a similar "Dual nationality nullifies the non-Irish-state status" thing going on?

Shockingly, it seems to me that to live legally in the UK with my wife, the simplest (although regrettable) route would be to denounce my British Citizenship so that I can enter as an EU resident (Irish) with my Non-EEA wife. Which of course doesn't make any sense.

[chaoclive]

I would strongly advise carefully considering whether or not you want to get an Irish passport. I'm a dual Brit/Irish citizen (at least at the moment) and I can't exercise treaty rights in any of these two countries. You will be in the same situation once you actually get your Irish passport.

I don't think Ireland will think that you have Irish citizenship if you have never undertaken an action that only an Irish citizen can do, e.g. getting an Irish passport. Therefore, you could exercise treaty rights in Ireland on your UK passport. There are many discussions about this on this forum and others, e.g. British Expats (Search under Surinder Singh via Ireland).

I just posted my application form for renouncing British citizenship yesterday. I'm hoping that this will work. We won't be applying for a visa for my partner until around June but I'll keep updating on the process.

[wiggsy]

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... ing-469986 worth reading the WHOLE thread.