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Notes -
Where "Irish" means at least one grandparent born on the island of Ireland (including Northern Ireland), or a parent who was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth. The system is deliberately set up to exclude Irish-Americans whose ancestors emigrated during the Ellis Island era. You can now maintain diaspora Irish citizenship indefinitely if each generation registers as foreign-born citizens before having kids, but if you have lost it you can't get it back.
Yep. I think it's possible to go further back if the relevant relatives are still alive, because actually claiming citizenship resets the generation gap (I don't have the rules open, but I'm pretty sure if your great grand-parent was born in Ireland, and you got your grandparent to claim Foreign Birth Registry citizenship, the grandchild would then be eligible despite the grandparent not being a citizen at the time of the parent's birth, let alone yours. I might be wrong on that though). But overall it's a very generous amount of diaspora citizenship, and really worth claiming for those eligible.
No - if your parent registers after your birth, you are SOL. My eldest is in this position - my wife was already pregnant when I started the foreign birth registration process after the Brexit referendum, and I didn't realise that there was a 10-month backlog. The only way I can pass on Irish citizenship to my eldest son is by living in Ireland (or Northern Ireland) with him and applying for naturalisation.
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