Irish Passport Rejected in Ireland
-I’m sorry, we can’t accept this
-It’s a passport!
-Do you have a driving licence?
Oh no, I thought, Ireland has turned into America.
Never having had a mobile phone, when I recently went to purchase a mobile modem I thought you could simply walk into a shop and purchase one.
The nice man in the O2 shop on Grafton street asked me where I was going and invited me to show him on his computer.
-I’ve looked at those coverage maps to death, I know what coverage it gets.
-We have much more accurate tools here than the ones online
He was right so I bit my lip and didn’t ask him why on earth they don’t make those mapping tools available online. Would the risk of lessening the time waiting to be served be too high?
Even with the advanced tools it was clear the modem was nowhere near an area with 3G coverage, and was smack in the middle of what was covered by the EDGE network.
To be fair he was trying to be helpful, and maybe I hadn’t made it clear that this was my only option for any kind of access to the web. So he told me there was no point in me buying a mobile modem because it would be uselss.
It will be like dialup, he explained. But, but, but, I responded, seeing no need to finish any of my sentences.
He told me I’d just end up bringing it back, and that they were using tools like this to try and prevent that happening.
I persevered with my sad face, because I had come into the shop to buy just access to the web not broadband or pseudo broadband.
So he finally conceded and said he wouldn’t stop me if I really wanted to, and he had made it very clear how useful/useless the modem would be for me using it from one specific location I’d indicated.
Breathing a sigh of relief I sat down on the offerered seat and he asked me for proof of ID and proof of residence. Ah, I thought, for I’m not in the habit of going shopping with a passport in my pocket.
The next day I went shopping with a passport in my pocket. And half of my earthly possessions. For I was in a van and moving to my new home. There was a Carphone Warehouse on the way.
I handed over my passport and a credit card bill as proof of residence, the residence I had just left. She came back to apologise that they actually didn’t have my modem of choice so I agreed to take whatever they could give me, and off she disappeared into the back room again.
The next time she came back was when she told me they couldn’t accept my passport as proof of ID.
It’s my 2nd passport. I got in in 2002 and it expires in 2012. The problem? Just 5 days earlier, the mobile phone companies had stopped accepting handwritten passports as proof of ID.
So I had two options. I could get a new passport and give up on 4 years’ of vaildity of my current passport. Just for a mobile phone company. Or I could learn to drive and get a license.
Either way I only had minutes as outside was a van with a dog destined for a cottage.
I do actually hold an American driving license but along with a load of credit cards it disappeared in a wallet one traumatic night in Dublin last December.
Then I remembered, due to my disorganisation in packing, one of the last things I grabbed was my Green Card, from America. And so it was in my pocket. It’s never in my pocket.
For those of you not familiar with the card commonly called a “Green Card” the Permanent Resident Card of the US is the most high-tech piece of ID I’ve ever had. And they haven’t been green since 1979.
My photo is an integral part of the card underneath a hologram of the Statue of Liberty. My fingerprint is also an integral part of the card and the hologram it is under is of the Official Seal. On the reverse is a hologram of me and my signature. If you hold it at the right angle I wink at you.
So I handed her my Permanent Resident Card and asked her if that would work. And for identification purposes, I winked at her.
She took into the mysterious back room to ask the ID monster who lives in the dark, and she came back to say sorry. I was kind of pleased at that really because it would have been wrong for an item of identification from another country to be accepted while my passport lay limp on the counter.
-If I pop next door to Vodafone?
-They won’t accept it either. If you’d come in a week ago it wouldn’t have been a problem.
She handed me their magazine with the full list of what was acceptable as ID from each of the companies. A magazine! That made it official.
In the end I did what she advised, I got somebody else to get one for me.
My passport was issued by the Consulate General of Ireland, in Chicago. It is handwritten because anyone who obtained their passport at an Irish Mission abroad (or from the Duty Officer Service in Ireland), would have a hand-written passport. It’s been good enough to get me to pass freely and without hindrance past international borders, but it’s no longer good enough to let me buy a cheap communications device in Ireland.
A machine readable passport is a passport where your details are printed on the page with your photo.
Ah, somebody said to me, it’s because you need a machine readable passport to enter the US on the Visa Waiver Programme, which makes no sense to me.
My passport remains the property of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ireland.
See More Like This:
• Unemployment Assistance aka Emigration Assistance
• Forget Your Irish PPS Number?
• Proof of That American Life
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Waouh that’s surprising that this could even happen. But thanks for sharing though.
Ah, sure now, that passport is just a piece of paper. Sorry to hear you’ve been sucked into the O2 experience.
Branedy - In fairness to O2 the passport ID conversation was in Carphone Warehouse, and the documentation they showed to me told me the new regulations applied to all of the mobile companies. But the O2 experience itself was certainly interesting, not least for watching all the iPhone conversations.
Hey
BranedyEolai,I wrtie for a national paper and thats an interesting story. I was wondering would you get in contact with me at the address above.
This is an amazing story and sounds like you have live in or have duel nationality to these countries. I was born in the U.k and have South African Residence which causes no end of hassel almost where evr i go. Although it has come in handy as i have 2 passports and can use the British one to travel Europe and the South African one for Africa (not much good for anything else) if i could sell it i might. Cheers for the story
Andrew - It’s really just a point about proof of identification within Ireland rather than a citizenship or residence issue. There are definite advantages to holding citizenship of more than one country but it’s just the one country I’m a citizen of.
So, how did you get a passport without a driver’s license?
Here’s my story: I don’t drive. I wanted a passport. They wanted either a driver’s license or a state ID. I took my birth certificate to the state department of finance and administration to get a state ID. They told me I needed my marriage license, because the name on my birth certificate is no longer my name. And by the way, I also needed a picture ID in order to get a state ID with my picture on. And by the way, why didn’t I have a picture ID, anyway? How did I cash a check, the state wanted to know? And if I didn’t have a picture ID, I needed either three alternate forms of identification in order to get a state ID, or notarised documents from two people unrelated to me who lived in the community who had known me for at least five years.
Finally satisfied all governmental agencies, applied for passport, which came in the mail six days later.
Called my local electric company a few days later to report a dead and leaning tree in the right of way in front of my house, a potential threat to the power line. Electric company responded by saying they didn’t have my social security number on file, and what was it? I told them I didn’t give that information on the phone, and why did they want it anyway? I never did understand why they wanted it, didn’t give it to them, but someone did come out and remove the tree.
Somewhere, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are laughing their butts off.
Martha,
So, how did you get a passport without a driver’s license?
The passport is the highest form of identification in Ireland, and is always afforded much more respect than any other form including a driving license. It’s the reason many Irish people are tickled in motels in America when their passport is refused as ID and a driving license is requested instead.
In Ireland a driver’s license is not the ubiquitous form of ID that it is in the US, and it plays no part whatsover in obtaining a passport.
To obtain an Irish passport for the 1st time you supply:
• The application form including witness signature
• 2 recent passport photos including witness signature
• Proof of Citizenship (birth cert)
The witness is a police officer when the application is made in Ireland. So it’s fairly straightforward and nobody in officialdom cares whether or not you can drive - which seems appropriate given how driving is no more related to citizenship than pogo-jumping is.
I can relate to your story of official identification without a driving license in America because of my own experiences when I first moved over there. In fact I’ve had a post planned on it since I started IrishKC.
And before all that I had some terrible times when cycling across America and trying to book rooms in motels without a driving license.
I think you are a great person for sharing such an Honest experience with the World. I guess I am off to the Ireland Consulate!