There was a sharp reduction in the number of marriages between non-Irish EU citizens and non-EU citizens in Ireland last year after a new law to crackdown on marriages of convenience.
There were 426 marriages between a non-Irish national with one partner from outside the EU last year, compared with 860 in 2015 and 1,163 in 2014, new figures from the General Register Office (GRO) showed.
The figures also revealed that 41 per cent of such couples who notified the Irish authorities of their intention to marry last year did not proceed with their wedding. Between 2012 and 2014, about 20 per cent of couples in that category failed to go ahead with a marriage ceremony.
There has been a significant reduction in the number of citizens from Pakistan involved in such marriages — down from about 400 in both 2014 and 2015 to 58 last year.
Kieran Feely, the registrar general, said the problem of marriages of convenience to circumvent immigration controls became more acute after a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2008.
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The ruling allowed the non-EU spouse of an EU citizen to move and reside with their partner within the EU without having previously been lawfully resident in a member state. The judgment did not apply to a non-EU spouse married to an Irish citizen.
“Non-EU nationals marrying Irish nationals are not entitled to EU Treaty rights in Ireland, so there is much less of an incentive to contract a marriage of convenience with an Irish citizen,” Mr Feely said.
The registrar general said the number of notices of intention to marry involving non-Irish EU and non-EU couples had grown “fairly dramatically” in recent years. They rose from 883 in 2012 to 1,584 in 2015 — an 80 per cent increase. In his annual report to the Department of Social Protection, Mr Feely said there had been an equally dramatic fall of 56 per cent, to 702, last year.
He said the introduction of the measures contained in section 18 of the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014 had “obviously had a significant impact”. The legislation, which came into effect in January last year, allows for a marriage of convenience to be declared invalid. It permits a registrar to consider certain matters where a notice of intention to marry is received from a foreign national.
In suspicious cases, the registrar is obliged to make a report to a superintendent registrar who decides the matter as well as providing a copy of all records and information to the minister for justice.
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Decisions of superintendent registrars can be appealed to the circuit court.
Mr Feely said the amount of litigation involving civil registration had grown considerably in recent years and was taking up a significant amount of the GRO’s management resources.
He claimed the GRO was involved in 56 separate legal proceedings last year, up from 37 cases in 2015.
The cases relate to applications for recognition of foreign and domestic marriages, recognition of foreign divorces, surrogacy and issues relating to identity — 13 cases involved appeals in cases of suspected marriages of convenience.