Spouse of an Irish Citizen Delay

[Topcat72m]

Hi all. I got married in June 2016 to a Filipina. She was on a C Visa. Went to Guarda who said we need to apply to remain in Ireland. She gave us the form.

The department we applied to is the Spouse of an Irish Citizen department.
That was last July. We got response saying what document to send and applicant number. We responded. We got response saying they recieved documents and need to wait our turn. Taking approx 9-12 months. That was more than 10 months ago.

So last week I rang them. Was told to send email. I did that and got automated message back.

I wanted an update and maybe a temp stamp 4 while waiting.

We have still not heard anything from them.


What should I do.

[chels]

Not sure if this will help at a; but on the advise of several people on this forum, I have started to be very very specific in how I phrase any emails about my application that I send to INIS.

From your post its not really clear if you received letter of acknowledgement from INIS after you submitted your application? If you did receive one (its on INIS headed paper, person and application ID number, receipt of fees paid etc) but haven't received an additional letter about your application moving to the second stage (don't know what this looks like as I haven't got mine yet either) then my advice (gained from others on this forum) would be to send an email asking explicitly what stage your wife's application is at. Maybe even be as explicit as to ask 'has it completed the initial stage of processing and progressed into the second stage".

As mentioned, I can't promise that will help but my own experience is that I have been less likely to receive the generic responses the more prescriptive I have been in my communications with them. Best of luck anyway!

[Topcat72m]

Yes. We got the Initial letter of acknowledgment as you describe. We haven't received anything further. After 10 months.

The email simply asks what is the status and asks for an update. We also gave ID number so it can easily be found.

That was over a week ago. Still no response. Im getting fairly pissed off now with it all.

[chels]

Gosh that really does seem like a very long time for you to have to wait! It's no wonder you're getting p'd off!

Yeah I suppose back to my previous recommendation, if emailing them again I would try not just asking for a general status update because I think that just encourages them to reply with the generic automated message - instead I'd be as specific as possible in the text of the mail. I suspect they use some kind of text reading program to decode the general statements in emails and then auto send a response - that's why I think if you're more detailed or specific then its more likely that it will get routed via an actual human (but this is all my assumption!)

The only other thing you might do in your case would be to speak to your local TD and see if you can get them to raise a question with the minister. That seems to happen fairly frequently - there's lots of examples if you Google. Again best of luck and I hope you hear something substantial back from them soon

[Topcat72m]

An update on this.

We wrote a letter and posted it to the address on our letter via registered post in June. In late July (12 months after initial application) we received a letter requestin all the documents we had already sent again to be sent within 30 days. With no explanation on the delay. We sent the requested documents immediately. They arrived there last day of July. It is now 20th of Sept and still no response not even acnoledgement that they received my post. It is now 14 months since the initial application.

This has to win the prize of the worst public service in Ireland.

[lucidj]

Any updates on this case? It's been 12 months for me now