Help: Irish embassy and passport in the post

Voyager2002

So my wife needs to go to a conference in Ireland next week. Since she has a Chinese passport she sent it off to the Irish Embassy to get a visa stamped into it. That was jut before the postal strikes began.

Even though she paid for it to be returned by special delivery, and the strike is officially off at the moment, there is still no sign of the passport. The obvious suggestion would be to ring the embassy, but their visa section only has a premium rate telephone number (and no joy from saynoto0870 website). She did send an email, but they said that without a reference number they could not trace her application. Since she applied by post she has never been given a reference number.

Any ideas? Of course, if anyone reading this works for the Irish Embassy that would be brilliant.

dsab

Unfortunately you might be in for a long wait. Irish Visas can take anything up to 6 weeks. My wifes recent application took 3.5 weeks. It seems that for some reason the Visa decissions are not made at the embassy but by the Justice Department (Visa Department) in Dublin. So it takes a long time.

Call them asap, I would say.

dan2002

Hi there just to let you know I was getting the public Bus from Belfast to Dublin airport 4 weeks ago and the bus was stopped by the police on the motorway just over the border and everyone was told it was an immigration check (never seen this happening before)checked everyone on the bus and took 3 people off,2 chinese men (police kept asking for their visa and told them a UK visa was no good for Ireland )the other man looked like a eastern european.They put their cases in boot of car and the 3 men were put in back of police car and they drove off ,so if I were you dont take a chance and try to come over without the visa