UK & BEYOND
 

Hi

Following is what we would like to do but not sure if UK counts our planned visit to Republic of Ireland as part of our 6 month(180 days) maximum stay. We are planning to arrive into London about 11 July and stay in England, Scotland until about 16th December. Then plan to spend 2 months in Republic of Ireland, back via London for 1 week and then 1 month in France before traveling across to the Czech Republic to depart home for Australia.
Does anyone know if this is OK or who we need to contact it would be appreciated.

Regards
Anne

You are dealing with the Schengen limits I believe. UK and Ireland are not in Schengen and therefore do not count as part of the 90 out of 180 days you can spend in Schengen.

Not sure what the UK and Ireland limits are so you may want to check that.

Just looked it up and you can stay in the UK for 6 months without a visa. Sorry, dont have time to look up Ireland but its easy to google Ireland travel visa...

"its easy to google Ireland travel visa"

It is - but don't. Assuming you're American, Canadian or Australian (and really: what IS the point of asking a q

"its easy to google Ireland travel visa"

It is - but don't. Assuming you're American, Canadian, NZ or Australian you get 3 months' visa-free stay when you arrive at a Republic of Ireland air or sea immigration desk. Googling visas gets you into a whole world of misleading information that doesn't apply to you.

Strictly speaking, you don't if you use the land border into the Republic from the North, and you're then supposed to leave the Republic 180 days after arriving in the UK. This is obviously nutty, and I can't imagine anyone bothers about it. But if you're planning this, you need to talk to your nearest Irish consulate, or email the contacts given at www.inis.gov.ie

The bit I see as problematic, is that they are unlikely to stamp your passport when you leave the UK to go or Ireland; and when you leave London in February, it's going to look like you were in the UK for more than your allowed 6 months.

Definitely your Irish visit doesn't count against your UK 6 months; but make sure you find some way of having the first departure officially documented.

My hubby has a CDN passport and they stamped his passport every time he went to Ireland from the UK...he could bypass passport control on the way back to the UK but on arrival in Ireland he always had his passport stamped....

Thank you so much everyone for your replies.
Sheila, yes that is exactly what I am worried about. I think I will contact the consulate here just to double check everything and give them our itinerary to see what they suggest.

The Republic of Ireland is a sovereign nation and has nothing to do with the UK (of which northern ireland is a part). I would keep air rickets and hotel bills to prove that you were in Ireland for a substantial period of time.

Ireland has some sort of arrangement that allows people arriving from Ireland to bypass passport control as long as they show their boarding pass at the UK airport. There is a separate q - look for the signs next time you are arriving in the UK (this is also true for the Channel Islands). We travelled alot to Ireland for my work and this was the case every time. I believe you can still go through passport control if you want to, but you dont have to.