The first Irish passport was issued in April of 1924 – 101 years ago.

EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, is set to stage an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the country’s passport that will highlight its role in shaping Irish identity, social change, and global connections.

The museum has put out a public call for stories looking to be told - it could be about a relative’s emigration, an unforgettable journey abroad, or receiving a passport as a new Irish citizen.

For further information, visit epichq.com.

Historian Catherine Healy told Moncrieff that British officials initially refused to recognise Irish passports when they were first released.

“The first passport was a green passport, similar in size to the current version,” she said.

“They had ‘Irish Free State, Saorstát Éireann’ on the cover, the description on the first double page spread is ‘citizen of the Irish Free State and British Commonwealth of Nations’.

“There had been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing in the months before its public release and authorities in London were very keen to have the wording ‘British subject’ listed on the passport, but Irish officials overruled that and went with a very different terminology.

“That did cause problems for some Irish overseas, in the first few years of the Irish Free State, British embassies and consular officials refused to recognise Irish passports.”

Ms Healy said this was an issue as Ireland had no foreign representatives at that point, so citizens had no choice but to seek help from British embassies.

1925 Irish Free State passport. The state established on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Image: Basement Stock / Alamy. 6 March 2011

“1939 was the first very substantial change to the passport, that’s the point at which the passport has ‘Éire’ listed on the front instead of Free State in recognition of the changes brought in under the 1937 Constitution,” she said.

“It’s a much flimsier document to what we have today – I mean, you had passport staff handwriting passports until the 1990s, you know?

“So, nowhere near as a secure document as the current iteration.”

Up to date red color Irish passport (European Union) alongside an old pre-EU green Irish passport. Image: Barry Mason / Alamy. 23 March 2021

According to Ms Healy, there was initially “a fairly modest take up” of the Irish passport, but this changed as immigration figures began to surge in the 60s and 80s.

“In 1994, for example, you’ve 187,000 passports issued that year – a decade later, 2004, you’ve got 607,000, and then last year, over a million,” she said.

“Those figures are a reflection of growing wealth and also how popular the Irish passport has become.

“As an Irish passport holder, you have the right to work and live both in the UK and EU, so post-Brexit and with all the uncertainty going on in the US and elsewhere, it’s become a valuable asset." 

The year before Brexit, there were more than 46,000 Irish passport applications from Great Britain.

In 2018, this figure more than doubled to over 98,500.

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Main image: Irish passport with airplane boarding pass on suitcase. Image: Nicola K photos / Alamy. 20 July 2020