Irish citizenship now seen as more desirable in light of Brexit vote, leading to a surge in applications

The Irish government has urged Britons to take some time to think before applying for an Irish passport as it warned that a surge in applications threatened to place major pressure on the system for processing them.

A spike in interest in Irish passports has occurred in Northern Ireland, Britain and elsewhere in the past few days, according to Ireland’s foreign minister, Charlie Flanagan, who said there was no urgency for UK citizens to apply.

While the numbers of people turning up to the office in London that processes applications for Irish passports had reduced on Monday, British citizens motivated by last week’s referendum vote were still turning up on Tuesday.

They ranged from one woman who said that she and her family had voted in favour of Britain leaving the EU, but now feared for the economic consequences, to others who had voted to stay.

Among the latter was Dominic Allen, who told the Guardian that he had been visiting London on business but had decided to also collect a bunch of Irish passport applications for his family.

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“We have been meaning for a while to reconnect with our Irish roots so Brexit has sort of forced the issue,” said Allen, originally from West Yorkshire but working in Norfolk.

He also cited concerns the potential usefulness of the Irish passport in terms of travelling around Europe in future.

Similar thoughts were on the mind of Oscar Brennan, 17, who came out of the office in South Kensington with an application form tucked under his arm.

“I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to do this because I have always felt a strong connection to Ireland through my parents,” he said. Again, the Brexit vote had prompted him into acting.

“In terms of job prospects you just don’t know what the future is going to hold, so it’s better to be safe than sorry and be equipped to work in Europe.”

Meanwhile an Irish minister and one of the frontrunners to succeed Enda Kenny as taoiseach has urged Ireland to puts its own interest before the UK’s in the post-Brexit negotiations between EU states and the British.

In a debate on Brexit’s implications for the republic, the minister for social protection, Leo Varadkar, said: “On some occasions, perhaps most, our interests are aligned with those of the United Kingdom but where they are not, it is not our duty to fight England’s battles for her. We must put the interests of Ireland first in the coming years and in the negotiation process.

But Varadkar promised to protect pensioners on both sides of the Irish Sea, both British people living in the republic and Irish citizens residing in the UK. He said: “Their pension and employment rights and their social insurance protections and obligations remain unchanged today and will remain unchanged until such time as there is a new agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom and between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.”