I can’t be the only person contrasting the nature of travel between England and France pre and post-Brexit. Pre-Brexit, it was straightforward. You showed your passport and scarcely that. Now, there is a gigantic thicket of regulations and form-filling, as if the Brexiteers, far from wanting a bonfire of bureaucracy, as was promised, were secret gauleiters: longing for the arbitrary discipline of routinised form-filling, making travel far more difficult. Of course, it is partly COVID. But I have been trying to fill up my ‘Passenger Locator Form’ to tell Big Brother where I will be. It does not recognise my existence. I may not be allowed back into the country.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
My daughter and grandson, who live in Paris, returned there today after five weeks here, on their newly minted French passports. They received their French naturalisation notice on the 27th December last. Today was the first time they used them as the French border control at Gare du Nord on the way out warned them to use their UK passports at UK controls to avoid plein se soucis. I find myself full of relief that they are now French, combined with a feeling that they are now safe. This country no longer feels safe.
And I am so jealous of your trip. Another visit to Sainte Victoire is definitely on my list. .
It’s depressing, isn’t it ? I might be eligible to take up Australian citizenship as my father was born there. Charles
You will be welcome with open arms although our current government is more than a bit of a worry. All the same, I work on the theory that governments pass. Bob Clarke
My dad came over from Ireland as a teenager to work at Fords, Dagenham. He died in his 50s – younger than I am now (as did so many Irish men of his generation – poor diet, manual jobs, drinking and smoking habits that we would frown at). What he couldn’t foresee – of course – was that while he wasn’t able to leave me a financial legacy of any sort, he did in fact leave me with a very useful one – an Irish passport.
My grandfather, the father of Denis Healey, was born in Co. Leitrim, so I am seriously considering getting an Irish passport. Has anyone with an Irish grandparent had any experience of gleaning the evidence necessary to obtain an Irish passport ?
Replying to Rob. My children are in this position as they have an Irish grandad. They haven’t applied yet as it is a 2 step process and the first step – obtaining citizenship/foreign birth registration – is paused during the pandemic. I assume that the documents are the same as the ones I needed when I got my passport (I automatically had citizenship as my dad was born in Ireland) – the Irish person’s birth certificate and, I seem to remember, marriage certificates too. I had to get some copies and found this really straightforward from the Irish registrars. It’s not cheap – over £200 to get citizenship and then another £60 or so to get the passport but it is, of course, a very generous scheme on the part of the Irish state, a recognition, I suppose, of just how big a role emigration has played in their history. Hope that helps.