WITHIN days of the UK voting to leave the European Union, post offices across Northern Ireland were putting up signs advising they had run out Irish passport application forms.

“Due to increased demand for Irish passport forms we have currently run out. We have an emergency order to meet the extra demand coming,” the proforma at the post office in Belfast’s Bridge Street read.

There are six million Britons eligible for Irish passports. Following the stunning June 23 referendum that saw a slim majority back Brexit, many of those panicked and rushed to take up citizenship of a country likely to remain in the EU.

In real terms, Irish Government figures this week showed that since January there had been 46,250 applications for Irish passports just from Northern Ireland, 6638 in July alone. Figures from mainland UK are expected to be higher when released next month.

Anecdotally officials said the rise in passport queries has been 70 per cent higher than for the same period last year.

It’s been two months since the vote and claims for the perceived safety of ancestral visas is not abating with queues still outside passport offices, not just in the UK. Irish embassies across the continent, most notably in Paris, Germany and Madrid, are reporting a surge of interest from expat Britons.

Such has been the demand for Irish passports, Northern Ireland’s General Register Office — which handles the documents for all births, deaths and marriages — suspended any new requests to deal with the backlog.

Genealogy website Ancestry.com also reported a 40 per cent rise since June in the number of people signing on with half of those exploring Irish roots, including from people in Australia.

This week the British government went into summer hibernation with most political leaders and MPs fleeing, ironically, for countries in the EU for summer vacation. Prime Minister Theresa May, who took the top job after David Cameron’s shock resignation, started a two-week hiking trip in Switzerland.

Before her holiday, May reaffirmed that she planned to trigger the formal beginning of Brexit in 2017 with the process not expected to finish before 2020.

But she left behind a nation still in the dark about what a Brexit will mean in the long term and an economy still spluttering along after the initial shock of the vote.

She also left the man who had campaigned for Brexit, now Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in charge of the nation as Treasurer Philip Hammond also is on leave.

The man who had had so much to say before the vote appeared a little quiet this week which marked the start of a month of an expected avalanche of official UK economic reports on inflation, employment, retail sales, confidences and public finances, the first indicators of the economy since the referendum vote.

And so far there was little to cheer about.

According to figures released on Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index inflation rose to a higher-than-expected 0.6 per cent last month.

The rise was driven largely by increasing costs of motor fuels and second-hand cars that drove up transport prices but also the slump in the value of the pound that had raised the cost of imports for British manufacturers who were now passing on the cost.

The CPI update came amid a bleak outlook for the UK economy. Many experts have slashed their growth forecasts after a string of dire reports that notably two weeks ago prompted the Bank of England to cut interest rates for the first time since 2009. The central bank delivered “an emergency package of measures” worth up to £170 billion ($A285 billion) to ward off a recession following the Brexit vote.

Scott Corfe, director of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, says consumers should brace themselves for a further rise in the cost of living in the months ahead.

“The sharp decline in the value of sterling since the Brexit referendum will translate into higher prices for imported goods over the coming months, pushing inflation to above 2.5 per cent in the first half of 2017,” he says.

“Combined with stagnant pay growth, we expect real inflation-adjusted employee earnings to decline by 0.1 per cent in 2017 … the UK’s strongly consumer-driven economic recovery is about to grind to a halt.”

Off the back of the CPI report, one of Britain’s biggest banking groups, Santander, warned the Brexit vote “marked the end” of a recent era of stability for UK banks, now facing the prospect of near-zero interest rates and wider economic woes.

It said Britain’s decision to quit the EU had thrown the wider economy into a period of “significant uncertainty”.

The British Chambers of Commerce, said the CPI rise was the “start of a prolonged period of increasing prices”.

Another report released a day later warned low-paid workers they should not expect any wage rise despite the expectation that a Brexit would result in reduced migration and less competition in the job market.

The report stressed the need for the Government to move quickly to address post-Brexit challenges faced by businesses, especially in sectors like food and clothing manufacturing, and domestic personnel services.

For those who can’t get a passport to stay in the EU, love may be the way.

British students Katy Edelsten and Chloe Cordon have set up a dating site called Idbenothingwithouteu.co.uk, which aims to make love matches.

“Nobody wants to get married just for a passport,” Edelsten says.

“It’s just another fun way to date at the moment when there’s all these other ways, so why not find love over Brexit.”

charles.miranda@news.co.uk