However, they continue to have favoured status in the United Kingdom and are largely exempt from British immigration law, eligible to vote in UK elections, and able to stand for public office there.

[30] Despite these disagreements, the two governments agreed not to establish border controls between their jurisdictions and all Irish citizens and British subjects continued to have the ability to move freely within the Common Travel Area.

[32] By the end of the First World War, the other Dominions had exercised increasing levels of autonomy in managing their own affairs and each by then had developed a distinct national identity.

[33] Legislation clarifying Irish citizenship acquisition was delayed due to the government's desire to negotiate an exception in British subject status with the rest of the Commonwealth.

Irish-born individuals continuing to live overseas became eligible to acquire Irish citizenship by registration, provided that they had not voluntarily naturalised as citizens of another country.

[36] During the period before passage of the 1935 Act, the government enacted several pieces of legislation that restricted certain types of economic activity to "Irish nationals".

For agriculture and banking, a person born overseas must have been resident in the Free State for at least five years before 1933 to qualify as an Irish national.

However, when determining the amount of stamp duty to be levied on property transactions, an Irish national was someone who had lived in the state for three years before 1947.

[39] Standard regulations in Commonwealth countries at the time strictly complied with the doctrine of coverture, where a woman's consent to marry a foreigner was also assumed to be intent to denaturalise.

[40] Women's rights groups throughout the Empire pressured the imperial government to amend nationality regulations that tied a married woman's status to that of her husband.

The Irish government rejected adopting this provision to avoid the appearance that the Free State was acknowledging in any way that Britain could legislate for Ireland and due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion of the post-independence populace.

Combined with the approaching independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, comprehensive reform to British nationality law was necessary at this point to address ideas that were incompatible with the previous system.

British authorities systemically discouraged non-white immigration into the UK, but strong economic conditions in Britain following the Second World War attracted an unprecedented wave of colonial migration.

The Irish regulation created a legal anomaly where persons born in Britain without British citizenship nevertheless held an unrestricted right to settle in Ireland; this inconsistency was removed in 1999.

[57] Registered individuals were deemed to have been Irish citizens backdated to their date of birth, allowing their children born at any time to acquire citizenship as well.

[58] The 1986 amendment provided for a six-month transition period ending on 31 December 1986 when registration continued to be backdated, triggering a rush among affected individuals to register before the new rules took effect.

The sudden large volume of applications became impossible to process before the end of the year, resulting in some individuals losing their entitlement to citizenship from birth.

[62] Irish citizens have since been able to work in other EC/EU countries under the freedom of movement for workers established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome[63] and participated in their first European Parliament elections in 1979.

[64] With the creation of European Union citizenship by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, free movement rights were extended to all nationals of EU member states regardless of their employment status.

[65] The scope of these rights was further expanded with the establishment of the European Economic Area in 1994 to include any national of an EFTA member state except for Switzerland,[66] which concluded a separate free movement agreement with the EU that came into force in 2002.

[67] Following the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum in favour of leaving the EU, Irish citizenship applications from Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) increased substantially.

A foreigner could acquire Irish citizenship through this programme after investing IR£1 million in a business with the goal of creating or maintaining 10 jobs for at least five years.

[73] Although Ireland had long granted birthright citizenship to any person born on the island prior to this amendment as a part of statute law, increasing levels of immigration into the country soon affected the degree to which that entitlement would be given.

The application of this ruling was extremely permissive in the immediate subsequent period; any non-Irish parent of a child born in Ireland was permitted to remain.

The scope of this entitlement was reduced in a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, which determined that the Minister for Justice could examine the circumstances by which a noncitizen parent was claiming a right to remain and held discretionary power to deport any such persons found to be acting contrary to national interest.

[75] However, the scope of noncitizen parental residence rights in the EU was expanded in the 2004 European Court of Justice case Chen v Home Secretary in which Man Lavette Chen, a Chinese woman who had travelled to Northern Ireland to give birth to her Irish citizen daughter then subsequently relocated to Wales with the intention of permanently living in the UK, was ruled to have a right of residence in the EU as the primary caregiver of an EU citizen exercising free movement rights in another member state.

The Minister for Justice has discretionary power to waive any or all citizenship requirements for applicants of Irish descent or association, minor children of naturalised citizens, individuals in public service stationed overseas, or recognised refugees and stateless persons.

Individuals who obtained citizenship through their marriage or civil partnership to an Irish citizen before 2005 and who reside outside of the island of Ireland may also have their status removed.

[91] On advice from the government, the president of Ireland has authority to grant honorary Irish citizenship to any person deemed to have rendered an extraordinary service to the nation.

[93] Although the Irish government was prepared to enact special legislation to grant a purely honorary title to President Kennedy rather than the substantial status, the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel determined that his acceptance of a personal honour of any kind without the express approval of the United States Congress would have been in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.