More Irish than British passports issued in Northern Ireland for first time

Rise in demand for Irish travel documents gives further weight to nationalists' argument for a reunited Ireland

A man walks past a nationalist mural in Belfast ahead of local elections in Northern Ireland. Reuters

Irish passports have outnumbered their British counterparts in Northern Ireland for the first time, figures show.

The shift was confirmed as Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein is expected to surge to victory in Thursday's local elections for the first time in Northern Ireland's 101-year history. A win for the party, whose aim is to reunite the island of Ireland, would throw the delicate power-sharing agreement with pro-British unionists into doubt.

At least 48,911 Irish passports were issued in 2020, while 48,555 people in Northern Ireland applied for British passports.

Northern Ireland’s 1.8 million inhabitants have the right to hold both British and Irish citizenship.

The statistics mark the first time more people in the region opted for an Irish passport over a British one.

The true number of Irish passports issued for the region is likely to be much higher as official figures are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), and do not include citizens who apply directly from Dublin. The NIPX service is available from post offices.

The figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request submitted by The Irish Times, showed last year saw a return to a majority of British passports in the region.

But the figures for 2020 are part of a growing trend in recent years of more Northern Irish people opting for Irish passports.

After the 2016 Brexit referendum, the number of Irish passports being requested by people across the UK shot up as many people, including Britons with Irish ancestry, sought hassle-free travel to the EU.

Fifty-two per cent of people in the UK voted to break ties with Brussels in the referendum, while 56 per cent of people living in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the bloc.

Opinion polls suggest this week's local elections could bring about a historic victory for Sinn Fein, which would entitle the party to nominate a first minister.

It would be the first time an Irish nationalist party has won the biggest share of the vote since Northern Ireland’s power-sharing assembly was born out of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which largely ended decades of violence.

But a Sinn Fein victory could lead to the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) boycotting a power-sharing agreement at Stormont, rather than allowing it to happen.

In LucidTalk’s final poll for the Belfast Telegraph, Sinn Fein had 26 per cent support, compared with 20 per cent for the DUP. The gap was wider at just more than 8 percentage points in a University of Liverpool/The Irish News poll, with the DUP neck-and-neck with the centrist Alliance Party on 18.2 per cent.

Political leaders in Northern Ireland clashed in a TV debate on Tuesday ahead of the ballot.

Sinn Fein's vice president Michelle O’Neill said it would be “absolutely unfathomable” to tell the electorate that a new Executive would not be formed following the election.

She also said she still had not heard if unionist leaders will “accept the democratic outcome of the election”.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has not made clear whether he will nominate a deputy first minister to serve along with a Sinn Fein first minister in the joint office.

The resignation of former first minister Paul Givan in February left the Executive unable to fully function.

Ms O’Neill accused the DUP of “holding us all to ransom” with its position of refusing to go back into an Executive without action on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Unionists are against the clause in the UK-EU post-Brexit agreement, which aims to prevent a return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The Protocol, they argue, effectively cuts them off from the rest of the UK because it stipulates that goods arriving in Northern Ireland must be subjected to checks at ports.

“While the rest of us want to put money in the people’s pockets and deal with the cost-of-living crisis, the DUP are telling people their identity is under threat,” Ms O’Neill said.

Sir Jeffrey responded by pointing to the resignation of former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, a Sinn Fein stalwart, which saw the Assembly collapse for three years.

If they win power, Sinn Fein have pledged to give people a say over whether they want to remain in the UK or become part of a reunited Ireland.

A border poll would likely spell disaster for the Conservative-led government as a vote to join Ireland would mean Boris Johnson’s legacy being tainted as the prime minister who oversaw the splintering of the union.

Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, Britain’s Environment Secretary George Eustice declined to be drawn on potential scenarios.

“A lot of the people I think in the Northern Ireland election this time are not voting, for once, through the prism of either being nationalists or unionists,” he said.

He said the government “will deal with whatever we’re faced with” and stressed that “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom”.

“Of course we believe in democratic elections but whether or not to have a referendum is always a matter for the UK government.”