In the Dark

Not surprisingly, given the imminent likelihood of big cuts to UK Astronomy funding as a result of our withdrawal from the European Union, quite a lot of the conversation at this evening’s RAS Club dinner revolved around ways of keeping EU citizenship in the post-BrExit era.

Through a bit of independent investigation I discovered a few weeks ago that, at least in principle, I qualify for Irish citizenship. This is because one of my grandparents (my grandfather on my mother’s side) was born in Northern Ireland. That is sufficient for me to claim Irish nationality, if I can prove it.

The problem is that the grandfather concerned died quite a long  time ago, when I was a kid. In fact, all my grandparents are deceased. To make matters worse I don’t know exactly when he was born or where or when he married my grandmother. This is a problem because I need to produce both his birth certificate and their marriage certificate, along with my mother’s birth certificate (and mine) to establish my case.

It is almost certain my grandfather was born before Ireland was partitioned in 1921, so his birth records may not even be in Northern Ireland but could be held in Dublin.

It looks like I have some interesting research to be getting on with!

This entry was posted on April 7, 2017 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Biographical with tags BrExit, Europe, nationality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.