The number of British people who have been granted Irish citizenship has risen by a staggering 1,115% since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Only 58 people from Britain were granted Irish citizenship in the year before the Brexit referendum, rising to 98 in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the EU.
According to Department of Justice documents seen by the Irish Times, 525 British people were granted Irish citizenship in 2017 followed by 685 in 2018.
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The figures dipped slightly to 664 in 2019, before rising to 945 in 2020 when Britain formally left the EU. A total of 1,191 British people were granted Irish citizenship in 2021, a rise of 1,115% since the year of the Brexit referendum in 2016 and a 1,953% increase since 2015.
In 2015, the number of British people granted Irish citizenship accounted for just 0.4% of all 13,543 successful applications from around the world.
However, that figure increased to 12% of all 9,788 successful applications in 2021.
The figures do not include successful applications from Northern Ireland, of which there were none between 2015 and 2021, although there have been five so far in 2022. Anyone born on the island of Ireland before 2005 can claim Irish citizenship, but the automatic right to citizenship was removed from the Constitution was removed in the same year.
Meanwhile, the number of Polish people dropped from 1,159 in 2015 to 819 in 2021, a fall of almost 30%. The number of Nigerians who were granted Irish citizenship also dropped considerably in the same period, dropping from 1,362 in 2015 to 744 in 2021, a fall of 45%.
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