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IT WAS 2008, it was the crack of dawn and the queue for passport control at Charles deGaulle Airport was moving at the pace of un escargot.
In the control booth up ahead, a suspicious Inspector Clouseau was painstakingly scrutinising every document as if expecting the Jackal to materialise in front of him, sniper rifle crammed into his carry-on luggage.
After an aeon I presented my passport and wearily prepared to wait.
Instead, Clouseau glanced at the cover, flicked an eye over the main page and handed it back with a wide smile.
“Almost time for a new passport, Mademoiselle Irlande, eh? You must do better next time with ze photograph,” he tut-tutted loudly and cheerfully, waving me on.
Mon dieu, everyone’s a critic.
Ah well, at least I was out the gap in jig time. And he had addressed me as “mademoiselle”, so there was that.
Notwithstanding a sorry history of dodgy passport photos (excepting the current one which miraculously doesn’t resemble a headshot snapped by zombie maestro George A. Romero) I’m very fond of my Irish passport.
For a start, it’s a pretty little booklet, with every page decorated with Irish images, Celtic symbols and bits of poetry and music. And its eventual replacement, the updated Irish passport launched last week, will be even more lovely.
Its images were chosen after a public consultation involving over 15,000 people and as a result is festooned with Irish flora and fauna.
As the pages are turned, hand-drawn pictures of animals associated with autumn, winter, spring and summer appear, including a red fox, a hare, a puffin, an otter and a robin.
And best of all, a majestic Irish Wolfhound – one of the public’s favourite selections – adorns several pages.
But more importantly, the new passport is bristling with enhanced security features designed to protect against fraud and forgery – according to Foreign Affairs Minister Helen McEntee, some of this tech, including 007-esque “temperature-changing ink” are being used in a passport for the first time anywhere in the world.
And by god the features are needed, because an Irish passport isn’t just easy on the eye, but it’s also an object of desire, for reasons not lost on various intelligence spooks and global shakers and movers.
The Irish passport has popped up in some peculiar places, including, bizarrely, in the clutches of veteran US marine Lt. Col. Oliver North who was a central figure in the nefarious Reagan era Iran-Contra affair.
When the scandal broke it emerged that North had carried a false Irish passport in the name of ‘John Clancy’ while on covert arms-selling missions to Iran in 1986.
Although the powerfulness of international travel documents is variously judged by different criteria, the annual passport index by Henly and Partners has ranked Ireland in joint fourth place alongside a handful of other EU countries this year, because its citizens can travel to 185 countries visa-free.
And why?
Well, Ireland is regarded as a stable democracy, particularly post-peace process.
It’s also a neutral nation which never had the clout, the wherewithal or the inclination to get its imperialist groove on and invade another sovereign state, thereby minimising our number of global enemies and lessening the chances of a grim-faced grilling when shuffling through passport control.
Furthermore, as part of the EU we enjoy the right to live, study and work freely within the member states and, uniquely, the UK.
In short, Irish citizens are immensely privileged; we are generally welcomed and largely spared the soul-destroying, tension-laden rigmarole of endless visa applications.
As a rule we can sashay through border checks, harp-embossed papers at the ready, murmuring, “I have nothing to declare but my genes”.
Is it any wonder that so many of our diaspora are feverishly (metaphorically) digging up Irish grannies?
Just look at post-Brexit Britain. Almost a quarter of a million people – 242,772 – living in the UK applied for an Irish passport in 2024, the highest number since the UK formally left the EU in 2016.
More than half of applications, 53%, were from people living in Northern Ireland.
The data also shows that the number of people living in Britain who applied via the Foreign Births Register reached 26,083 last year, the highest number since the Brexit referendum.
This route allows people living in Britain who were not born in Ireland but have an Irish parent or grandparent, to apply for an Irish passport. Prior to the UK’s ignominious departure from the EU, the figure was a modest 873.
Fair play to them – after all, that number includes plenty of involuntary emigrants obliged to leave the country in order to earn a living, and who still visit, keep in touch with friends and family on the island, or cheer for teams sporting green or county colours.
Buuuut….my hackles still rise regularly on sight of more than a few of our nearest neighbours en fête on social media crowing about their newly-minted Irish passport – a document which has clearly been acquired for one reason only. “No more long queues in Malaga!!!” followed by a dancing leprechaun gif and an emoji of the Côte d’Ivoire flag.
Ah here. Surely our passport with all its thoughtful beauty and economic benefits shouldn’t be relegated to being a handy life hack to skip queues in airports for people who have never set foot on Irish soil and have no intention of doing so, and who had no interest in their Irish granny until the disruptive consequences of Brexit on their holibobs became clear?
What to do? Scrap the granny rule? Or make it a renewal condition for all passports acquired via the foreign births register that the holder must have spent a minimum of two weeks in the country during the decade, and must have attended at least one inter-county football or hurling game and undergone one pilgrimage to the Ploughing? And that they understand the true meaning of the Irish response “I will yeah”?
And now the Yanks are at it. Last year, a record 18,910 Americans applied for Irish citizenship by descent through the foreign birth register, an increase of 63% compared with 2024 and the highest number since records began.
Pure coincidence of course, that this spike coincides with the second ascent of the Mad King to the golden throne.
On one level it’s hard to feel sympathy for America. Voting once for Donald Trump may be regarded as a misfortune. To vote for him twice looks like carelessness.
But when one absorbs the sheer horror of the brand-new passport offering from the grifter-in-chief, it may be that they’ve suffered enough.
To mark the 250th anniversary of the nation that he personally founded, US citizens will soon be able to purchase a special commemorative passport “while stocks last”, featuring a full-page portrait of President Trump looming over the Resolute desk with his fists balled and sporting a glowering visage like a well-slapped arse.
No foxes, birds, badgers, poems or doggos. Just an almost comically sinister portrait-shot of a pound shop Don Corleone.
A passport is a privilege. And so is the right to vote in a functioning democracy.
Oh America – you really must do better next time with ze photograph.
Lise Hand is a journalist and writer, and a columnist for The Journal.
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