Do referees for naturalization need to be residing in Ireland?

[truevelvet]

Unfortunately I don't have that many close acquaintances that are residing in Ireland (I work for a multinational where most of the staff in Ireland is immigrants) but I do have some pretty strong work connections with Irish citizens that are living in the US.

Would their references count differently for naturalization or not at all?

[Whitebeam]

Unfortunately I don't have that many close acquaintances that are residing in Ireland (I work for a multinational where most of the staff in Ireland is immigrants) but I do have some pretty strong work connections with Irish citizens that are living in the US.

Would their references count differently for naturalization or not at all?

It didn’t say clearly in the form. So I assume as long as the referees are Irish that’s fine. However, it would be hard to convince the reviewer of your application that you have strong connection with the country because even multinational company in this country should employ at least 50% of Irish and EEA citizens. Moreover, if the referee is not a resident in Ireland, it is hard for the reviewer to contact the referee in case they want to call. So it is advisable to have the Irish referee who is the residence of this country.

[meself2]

That's an interesting one, doubt this was raised here before.

From similar posts on thsi board, but! in relation to UK refereees I've seen people saying that "if you cannot find a referee, that might mean you're not integrated enough into society" and I'm afraid Irish citizenship department may reach similar conclusions.

[truevelvet]

Thanks folks, this is good insight.

You're right on 50% of the staff being Irish but I should've mentioned I'm on engineering and they're on sales, so there's not a huge opportunity to connect. I'll figure it out somehow