Today, we decided to talk about the technical side of coming to Ireland and more specifically about getting a visa for this country. Since for not only Russia but also any other country that hasn’t joined the European Union you need a visa if you want to go to Ireland.
We would like to note that, not counting its attractiveness Ireland hasn’t yet become a country that is constantly visited by a steady stream of tourists from all over the world. This is true even though every year four times the population of Ireland passes through Dublin Airport.
And if you add the amount of people that come to Ireland by ferries then it is obvious that Ireland isn’t completely hidden away from tourists. But there would be a larger amount of tourists if you didn’t need to get a visa, since getting a visa has its difficulties.
We won’t list all the documents that one needs to get a visa, but instead all of the things that affect the problem of getting a visa. One of these things is the tourism agencies of some countries, including Russia; don’t have enough tourists willing to visit Ireland.
This means that the agencies that help people in getting a visa don’t have enough professional experience with the Irish embassy to make this process easier. Any way, putting all of the blame on the agencies wouldn’t be fair since a fairly large amount of work in getting the documents for the Irish Embassy has to be done yourself.
Even if you want to go to a place such as Great Brittan where the procedure of getting a visa is fairly difficult, it’s still easier to find a tourism agency than here in Ireland. This is like a never-ending circle. A tourism agency can’t make the process of getting an Irish visa easier because of the fact that there aren’t enough people willing to visit Ireland because they do not want to bother with the complex process of getting a visa.
Also, although Ireland is part of the European Union it is not a member of the Schengen Agreement so it cannot take people with just a Schengen visa. This means that there will be fewer tourists that like to visit countries in the Schengen area visiting Ireland. As you could probably imagine Ireland and Great Brittan have no reason to join up with the Schengen Agreement because both of these countries are located on islands.
Here is another paradox associated with getting an Irish visa. The lucky owner of such a visa still has no right to visit the area of Northern Ireland if he doesn’t have a British visa, and vice versa. An owner of a British visa, who is in the area of Northern Ireland, cannot visit the Republic of Ireland.
Although truthfully this rule won’t apply in the year 2012. Wanting to get more tourists during the time that the London 2012 Olympics will on, it was mutually decided that until October 2012, anyone with a British visa could visit Ireland without having an Irish visa.
At present it is much easier for students to receive an Irish visa. Probably this connected to the fact that the cost of education in Ireland is quite high. And if you add the price of the flight, accommodation and dining to the original price the total price becomes much larger that that which an average tourist would have. Also, the institute will only send a letter to the Embassy explaining that you need a visa if you pay the entire deposit.
A work visa, which has given thousands of immigrants the chance to work and settle down in the ‘Emerald Isle’ during the time of the Celtic Tiger (1992-2007), is almost impossible to get nowadays. Today Ireland’s economical position isn’t as good as it used to be, so you could only get a work visa if you were working in some very important sector of technology, especially if your job involves Internet Technologies.
Business visa are also very hard to acquire so we won’t talk about them, instead, to end our post, we will talk about the rather cheerful subject of Marriage visas. Yes, these visas really do exist. They have their own owners, equal to that of any other visa. This a less problematic visa to get, especially if the groom is an Irish citizen and doesn’t decide to call off the wedding at the last moment!
For more information on visas in Ireland we recommend reading the following post.
