Anne Delaney explains the culture, history and politics behind the document

 

I decided to check my Irish passport recently to make sure it hadn’t reached its expiry date, hopeful plans for a winter holiday revolving in my head. I realised, as I slowly turned its pages – and was struck for the very first time by the document’s craftsmanship – that I had been travelling under this passport’s solid protection for many years and had taken it largely for granted.

As I leafed through it, I suddenly recognised that this soulful document was really a declaration of love and belonging and culture, as well as a travel document.

For the Irish passport is a work of art, show-casing flowing illustrations of Gaelic games, hand-drawn landmarks such as the Cliffs of Moher and Croagh Patrick, national symbols like the ancient Brian Boru harp and with lyrical poetry in Irish, English, and Ulster Scots embedded in its pages.

This passport celebrates much that is uniquely Irish and has been the bedrock of Irish identity for over 100 years. It is a hightech as well as a beautiful document and contains many innovative features to prevent forgery, including the use of microtext to create patterns or figures within the passport’s design.

But the Irish passport, 101 years old in April 2025, had a very rocky start. For the UK government reacted badly to being informed in 1923 that the Irish Free State proposed to issue its own passports and, even more shockingly, to refer to its citizens in these new passports as citizens of the Irish Free State.

The British Government of the day was unhappy. It declared frostily that the proper wording should include the description ‘British subject,’ given that the fledgling Irish State was part of the British Commonwealth.

The Irish Government reluctantly compromised and stated its intention to refer to Irish citizens as ‘Citizen of the Irish Free State and of the British Commonwealth of Nations’. The British were not satisfied but the Irish government ploughed ahead and in August 1923 the Irish delegation to the League of Nations used Irish passports for the very first time.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own