This is my first post.
I am in the process of attempting to get onto the foreign birth register, by dint of an Irish grandfather.
The application was rejected, and I will now appeal. I am looking now for advice regarding the appeal.
My case is unusual - the grandfather in question sexually abused his daughters, one of whom was my mother, and so was ostracized from the family; I never knew him, or even his name, until I began the process of collecting the necessary documenation.
From the marriage certificate of the grandfather and my grandmother, I knew his name, his fathers name, and his age on the date of the marriage. From this, from the on-line databases, there were four possible grandathers - two English, two Irish.
Of these, three had the same fathers name! but this eliminated one of the Englishmen, who did not.
Of the other Englishman, he died aged eight days old; I found his death certificate.
This left two Irishmen. For one of them, I found the death certificate, for the other, not (he could even still be alive). The man for whom I found the death certificate seemed the most likely candidate, given the professions involved.
This was the best I could do - I had no way to differentiate between them or know in any other way than the documentation that they were my grandfather - and I applied on this basis.
Note that however I did have all the required documentation for an FBR application (except for my mothers passport, and I explained why this could not be provided in an affidavit).
The application was made in November 2016, and it was two weeks ago the rejection was issued (eighteen months).
The Irish embassy where I made the application was happy with it, but it was rejected in Dublin.
I was led unofficially to understand the reason the application took so long was that Dublin felt it was having to chose which grandfather was the man in question. (There was I imagine additional delay as the case officer in the Embassy retired during the course of the application). This was eventually sorted out (I had made it clear in the covering letter which grandfather I thought was correct, and the Embassy fully agreed) but I would say by the looks of it it was in the end enough for the rejection to occur.
My original thought at this point was to find out why the application was rejected, fix that, and then proceed with an appeal. As you would expect, my naive imagination of what occurs is completely different to what actually occurs : bureaucracy is never anything like what normal people would think it would be
There is a page on DFA which describes the appeals process;
https://dfa.ie/about-us/our-commitments/fbr-appeals/
I wrote to the FBR Appeals Officer and asked for clarification on the rejection.
I was informed there is no appeals process but a review process : the application is reviewed by a higher-level official. This seems rather pointless - if it was rejected in the first place, and is unmodified, a second rejection would be expected.
I was stonewalled regarding the cause of rejection. The rejection letter said "insufficient documentation" and nothing more, and Dublin so far is sticking to this line : "you were told why in the letter", they say.
So, down to cases.
1. After a rejection, is a review the and the only next step for that application? is it possible to provide additional documentation at this point?
2. Can I reasonably look to obtain clarification on the cause of rejection?
3. Any general advice or experience? anyone else here issued an appeal? what happened?