Fly birmingham to Dublin?

Question

I have a Kenyan passport, but should have UK passport soon. In the meantime will my UK driving license be sufficient to fly Birmingham to Dublin

Answer 1

Only Irish and British citizens can travel without passports in the Common Travel Area.

You will need a visa for Ireland with your Kenyan passport if you come to Ireland.  

I am not sure, but if you are still a citizen of Kenya but with a UK passport (under asylum laws or something), you will still need a visa.

If you have UK citizenship, you can travel here with no legal problems.  You do not require a visa to come to Ireland if you are a UK citizen.

On the other hand, while it is illegal to come here without a visa or citizenship of a valid country, for flights between the UK and Ireland there is very rarely immigration control.  The stations are not manned and only rarely is identification asked for.

Typically we would get off the airplane in either country and only find customs to go through.  Immigration control is not typically manned for flights between these two countries.

Theoretically, you could come here on your Kenyan passport with no visa, but you would be breaking a lot of laws and may lose your UK visa and will not be issued a visa in a lot of countries in future as you would be a high risk immigrant.

You risk a lot if found out.

Wait for your UK citizenship to come through (if that's what it is).

You can see here I use the word 'citizen', as I am unsure whether holding a UK passport would make you a citizen of that country.  

Be sure you are a citizen before travelling.  

If not, get a visa to travel or contact the Irish Embassy in the UK.  At the very least so that you do not break any laws.

EDIT: seabhcan, could you link to a source for that assertion please?

You're the only reference I could find to it on the internet.

I didn't look very hard though.

And I travel quite a lot, actually, I'm just on the Dublin side of the water ;-)

Answer 2

No. You can only enter Ireland with a drivers license if you are a UK citizen AND you were born in the UK before 1983.

When you get your UK passport, you will need it to travel, you can never use your drivers license because you were not born in the UK.

If you travel on a Kenyan passport you will need an Irish visa.

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Edit: I think Fran S has not traveled for a long time. There are AlWAYS passport checks on the Irish side. This is since 1997. On the UK side they are rare, however.

There are no customs checks. This is because both the UK and Ireland are in the EU. Customs checks stopped in 1973.

If you have a UK passport you are a citizen and if you are a citizen you can have a UK passport. If you have a UK passport you can travel to Ireland using it (but you still can't use a drivers license).

She may be confused because there are types of "British" passport which are not UK passports. These used to be issued to people from Hong Kong. This issue is not relavant to your case.