Mart81

Weird experience a few days ago landing with BA from LHR into DUB.

Approached immigration staff as usual and handed over my driving license as I have done on nearly a dozen of trips to Ireland over the past few years and got a lecture saying that Ireland and the UK have been separate countries for a very long time and this was not a domestic flight.

I suspect the immigration officer was either brand new on the job or felt the need to make a political statement. He made it very clear that the ROI and the UK are two different countries and it was not acceptable for me to travel on my driving license. Clearly this individual had never heard of the CTA

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en...nd_the_uk.html

He insisted I showed him a passport upon which I showed my national ID card (EU) and was allowed into Ireland, handy I have it in my wallet at all times.
I boarded the flight at LHR with my driving license and also boarded the return flight from DUB to LHR with my driving license no questions asked.

My wife (who is on a non-EU passport but holds an EEA2 EU residence certificate for the UK) got sent away from the EU queue by him as well (which she is legally entitled to use) and once in the non-EU queue her passport got stamped, which again, is a 100% against legislation. Non-EU passport holders with EEA2 certificates are not allowed to have their passports stamped when travelling within the EU as they have equal rights to EU citizens. The annoying thing is these needless stamp fill up blank pages that could better be used for visas to faraway countries.

I feel like lodging a complaint, any views on the above?

lorcancoyle

Some of the staff in DUB are poorly trained, others very sensible. My last version of such a 'discussion' was that unless I had my passport how could they know I was Irish or British and thus entitled to use the CTA provisions...

zkzkz

You have a national ID card? in which case I suspect you are not born in the UK? and suspect you haven't naturalized though in any case the drivers license only indicates country of birth. The CTA only applies to UK and Irish nationals. Other EU nationals must show passport or national ID as usual.

paul4040

If you have a national ID card then this suggests you weren't born in the UK.

The Republic (and Dublin in particular) is now very British-friendly and political relations are the best they've ever been. So, I think it's unlikely a border agent will have been making a political statement. You'll generally find political statements even in the North are somewhat taboo, as it's considered kosher to keep the peace as much as possible.

The purpose of the UK driving licence is to show that you are British for the purposes of the Common Travel Area. The CTA doesn't work in quite the same way as Schengen does.

I have come across some quite shirty Gardaí at DUB before, even when travelling there on my Irish passport, so I can well believe your treatment wasn't exactly cordial.

Lee_Again

I'm confused

Are we saying that we have to show a passport to prove our nationality which then allows us to not show the passport?

Mizter T

My bolding. This is the crux of the matter. If you're not a UK or Irish citizen, the Common Travel Area is irrelevant.

(Well, it's not entirely irrelevant - if crossing by land from the ROI to NI or vice versa, the lack of immigration checks can be problematic for those non-EEA nationals that need an immigration stamp or such like.)

Aviatrix

The Immigration Officer was right and wrong at the same time.

British and Irish citizens can legally travel between the two countries on their driving licences, so telling you that you can't use your driving licence (before he knew that you weren't British or Irish) was wrong.

As others have said, you, as a citizen of another EU country, are not eligible to travel on your driving licence - so he could have turned you away once he was satisfied that you weren't British. But how do you prove whether or not someone is British/Irish, if there is no need for British/Irish citizens to carry passports? I've known people with thick foreign accents who were British, and people without a trace of an accent who were not...

benjyyy

This is indeed the case - you need to show your passport to prove that you don't need to show your passport. Us Irish are a special bunch

paul4040

Kind of...

It was borne out of some very unique political circumstances; the Wiki article is a decent read: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

I've always travelled using my passport when visiting Dublin.

Incidentally, the qualification criteria for Irish citizenship are now so broad that they may as well give passports away in cereal boxes!

jms_uk

It is a catch 22 situation.

Maybe they should disallow use of DL for entering IRL/UK?

(I am British citizen, but wasn't born in one of the four UK countries.)

lorcancoyle

All perfectly logical to a bureaucrat somewhere...

FrancisA

It's only catch 22 up to a point. If your place of birth on your driving licence is in the UK or Ireland, then that is normally sufficient without any need to show a passport.

However, if your place of birth is outside the UK or Ireland, then you need to show a passport to show (in the case of UK or Irish citizens) that you don't need to produce a passport to benefit from the CTA.

Of course, if the UK and Ireland just joined Schengen ...

spud757

Never had any trouble using my UK issues DL at DUB or SNN.

I think the driving licence shows country where you were born; mine says England. I guess this is what RoI immigration check to see if you are obviously entitled to use the CTA rules. If unclear on DL then passport required.

Strange though how RoI checks ID / passports arriving from the UK but in reverse no UK border checks at all. Essentially arrive at UK airports from RoI like you would from the Channel Islands (eg no UK border, just customs).

NickB

This is not quite accurate. Although the EU legislation refers to EU citizens being entitled to cross internal EU borders on production of a valid passport or (where relevant) ID card, the CJEU has made it clear that the requirement is purely evidential and not constitutive of the right to cross the border. Therefore, as long as you can establish by any means that you are an EU/EEA national, then the immigration officer cannot deny you entry on the ground that do not have a passport or ID card.

Now, you could say that a driving license does not constitute conclusive evidence of nationality. While this is true, at the same time, Irish immigration officers seem to treat a British driving license which indicates a birth place in the UK or Ireland as sufficient evidence of British or Irish nationality to establish entitlement to movement under the CTA arrangement.
If that is so, and bearing in mind that immigration officers cannot discriminate on grounds of nationality against EU citizens, it would be a breach of the non-discrimination principle for an Irish immigration officer to treat as insufficient evidence of EU nationality for a passenger to show a British driving license indicating a birth place within the EU when that immigration officer would treat such a licence with a birth place in the UK or Ireland as sufficient evidence of nationality (unless, of course, there were special circumstances from which the officer could legitimately harbour doubts as to the nationality of the traveler and therefore make further enquiries/request additional documents).

Thus, if Irish immigration officers are content with a British or Irish citizen showing a British or Irish driving license with a UK/Irish birthplace as sufficient credentials to establish their nationality and therefore entitlement to move between the two countries, then they should in principle equally allow other EU nationals to do the same on production of the same documents (and with a birthplace in the EU) so as not to breach EU law rules on non-discrimination.

So the OP has a point when he says that the requirement to show a passport or ID is legally dubious. But it is not quite as straightforward as it seems.

As to the OP's wife, in principle possession of a residence card as a family member of an EU national results in a third country national being exempted from any visa requirement. OTOH, I do not read the legislation as necessarily implying a right not to have any stamping of the passport when crossing the border. Denial of access to the EU/EEA immigration lane is, however, somewhat dubious given that the requirement of non-discrimination extends to family members of Union citizens and the denial of access to that lane could, arguably, be construed as such discrimination.

jms_uk

And yet, one could have UK driving licence indicating place of birth in the UK and not being British citizen...