For some citizenship-seekers asked to submit more documents, technical glitches trigger refusals

On 27 January, Marcos Lopes Silva got a rejection notice on his Irish citizenship application.

More than a month earlier, on 19 December 2024, the Department of Justice officials had asked him to submit some more documents.

He had uploaded them the following day, he says. But then, on 6 January, he got a notification reminding him to submit the documents he’d already submitted.

He knew something was wrong when he saw that, Silva says. “Just to be sure, I sent an email to citizenshipinfo@justice.ie.” He wrote that he’d already sent the documents.

The Department of Justice has recently confirmed to Wendy Lyon, partner and immigration solicitor at Abbey Law, that it has retired that email address, Lyon said.
As recently as October, that address was listed on the Department of Justice’s irishimmigration.ie website as the main contact for citizenship questions.

It’s unclear exactly when it was retired or if that was communicated to applicants.

In any case, Silva didn’t get a response to his email but received a notice 20 days later saying his application for citizenship had been rejected.

It said he hadn’t submitted additional documents, and his application status changed to “complete” on the Department of Justice’s citizenship portal. “But it’s clearly not,” says Silva.

Then, a few days later, he managed to log into the portal again and saw the status had switched to the very first stage, saying “application received”.

Does that mean they realised the system’s glitch and the rejection was cancelled? Silva says he has no idea. “I’m completely lost with their processes,” he said on 12 February.

If his application is rejected he has to spend €175 for a re-do.

The citizenship unit’s switch in October 2023 to only accepting documents online ended byzantine practices requiring would-be citizens to post a huge parcel, which contained so many fragments of their identity, to Co. Tipperary, where it’s located.

But Silva is not alone in his struggles to navigate the online system. Some others who were asked to send additional documents say they faced the same technical short-circuits when they submitted them. And when they try to communicate the problem, it’s really hard to get a hold of a human to hear them out, they say.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said the online system has made life easier for many, helping more people to apply. “Since the launch of the online application, over 31,000 applications have been successfully received,” they said.

Its citizenship unit is aware that some applicants are uploading new documents but “failing to resubmit” their application, the spokesperson said. It’s important they do both, they said. “It is essential that applicants resubmit their application.”

“In the past 3 months over 3,500 applicants have successfully uploaded requested documentation/information and successfully resubmitted their application for consideration,” the spokesperson said.

They sent a guidance document the department has published, but it doesn’t lay out rules for submitting extra documents, like how people should upload and resubmit the application.

An email sent by officials to Lyon with specific instructions for submitting additional documents also doesn’t bring up resubmitting the application.

Hard to reach

Problems with citizenship applications can be pretty stressful.

Having Irish citizenship is deeply important for those who weren’t born in a Western country as it offers freedom of movement, saves money spent on visas and Irish residence permits and brings stability. It also shields people from travelling hassles that flying with a non-Western passport can bring.

For young children who don’t get immigration papers or even re-entry visas, it means dodging frustrating hurdles like being unfairly denied boarding on the way back from an overseas trip with their parents over lack of those documents.

So the stakes can be high when someone is submitting a citizenship application, and waiting for a decision.

Irina Osipova, who has applied for citizenship for her 12-year-old daughter, says she’d sent emails to three different email addresses to let officials know she’d submitted the document they wanted, and opened three queries on the citizenship portal.

“I understand they’re busy. I appreciate the job they do, but there has to be a way,” said Osipova on Friday.

Osipova had initially submitted a birth certificate for her kid, verified and translated to English in Ukraine, their country of birth. “I thought it was going to be okay, but yeah, apparently, they needed one [a translation and verification] from Ireland,” said Osipova on a video call recently.

Her worries mounted when she kept coming across posts on a citizenship information Facebook group from people reporting the same problem and getting a rejection because somehow their additional documents hadn’t gone through.

She couldn’t edit anything on the portal either, she says, to re-upload the document. “It says review submitted information, but I cannot change anything. How could they not see that?” said Osipova, shaking her head.

At one point,  she got someone on the phone at the Department of Justice’s citizenship unit in Co. Tipperary. “I was shocked,” said Osipova.

She says she cut to the chase and quickly asked if she should read the application’s reference number for them to check it out to avoid taking their time.

“She said, ‘No, no, no, no, not at all, everything’s through the portal.’ She didn’t even want to hear about my problem,” said Osipova.

Lyon, the solicitor, says restricting all communications to the portal and closing the dedicated email address also means she has had to switch to sending actual letters to the department because the portal is something private to her clients.

Osipova says she’s posted three letters to Tipperary so far because she wasn’t getting responses through the portal and there’s a 10-day deadline for submitting additional docs.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it has set up a “digital contact centre” as part of its efforts to offer a “modern, transparent system which is much more accessible”.

Through that, a person can check the status of their citizenship and a few other immigration applications and submit questions about them, they said, replacing email “such as the citizenship mailbox”.

“With more than 5,500 citizenship queries resolved since the launch of the DCC [digital contact centre],” they said.

For lawyers, they said they can also set up an account there and get recognised as legal representatives for “numerous clients”.

It’s currently working to improve the system as part of the next chapter for its contact centre.

But Lyon, the solicitor, says the system asks lawyers to upload their passports too just to get set up to correspond as legal representatives, and she finds that intrusive.

Hear me out

Sumaira Nasreen is another applicant who got a rejection notice because her additional documents didn’t seem to have gone through on the portal. “Unfortunately,” she said in a text message.

Manushaqe Hysenaj, who has applied for his son Ledion, says the portal won’t let them upload the additional documents the citizenship unit requested – school letters – saying they’re not needed. “I can’t submit anything.”

He’s posted and emailed the documents, he said. “But they returned documents back  they said they are not accepting any more by post or email.”

Osipova, the mum who applied for her daughter, says she dreads a re-do. “That’s not fair because we have uploaded [the documents].”

The portal shows incorrect status updates to some people, too.

Alka Choudhary says her application’s status is marked as complete. But, “I haven’t received any Garda vetting, how could the application be complete?” she said.

Osipova, the mum who’s applied for her daughter, says officials told her she has to “save” the new document before pressing submit.

She says she hadn’t read this in any of the guidelines and how-tos available online.

An email from officials to Lyon with details of submitting instructions does not mention saving the extra document either.  It just says upload the document and press submit.

“Another important question is, why was I allowed to submit it incorrectly? Why didn’t it show me an error?” Osipova said.

She’s told them that the system won’t let her edit anything now, but no one seems to hear her out, said Osipova.

Osipova and others say what makes navigating portal fails more stressful is problems in connecting with an actual human who listens.

“It has to be heard; they have to see our point of view. All those automated responses, there’s no human to check,” she said.

UPDATE: This article was updated at 10.47am on 28 February 2025 to include information from an email sent by officials to a specific client offering instructions for how to upload an additional documents.