Europe



Authorities in Australia are investigating a growing migration fraud involving Irish people using their Gaelic names to conceal their passport identities when seeking visas.

Irish passport

Irish passport Image by Sean MacEntee

The antipodean crackdown is into Irish people who have previously been issued visas in their English-language names, and are then seeking to gain entry for a second time.

The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection sent officers to Ireland recently to meet their counterparts in a bid to understand what to look out for.

A spokesperson said the Australian Department wanted to stop the situation where a person could use new passport features to access visas into Australia.

The Irish Independent reports that the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin confirmed it was working on ways to stop people trying to conceal their identity by securing a passport in their Irish-language name.

Among the measures being considered to prevent identity fraud, is only allowing the use of birth names in English on the passport if travellers can prove they had used the Irish-language version of their name for at least two years.