As Ireland gears up its response to the pandemic, its government has announced to restart processing of short-stay entry visas. As per the reports, Ireland Visa Application Centres (VAC) in India have also started accepting short stay applications, which will likely encourage travellers to visit Ireland for tourism. As regarding the short-stay visas, these allow visitors to travel to Ireland for up to 90 days.
Referring to this, the Embassy of Ireland in India released a statement stating that eligible short stay visas will, again, be endorsed with the letters ‘BIVS’, which signifies access to the shared British Irish Visa Scheme. The statement further added that all travellers arriving to Ireland must continue to comply with measures required by law, including producing proof of vaccination, recovery from COVID-19, or a negative PCR test to Immigration Control at their port of entry. Also, all remaining COVID-19 restrictions on entry visa and preclearance processing, which were brought in as a necessary interim measure to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, have now been lifted, the statement added.
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The Embassy urged the visa applicants to be aware of the current visa processing time, and reiterated that requests for expediting applications will not be currently considered. And regarding the processing time, it will take25 days to issue a visit visa, 20 days for a study visa, and 10 days for a business visa.
Reportedly, fully vaccinated Indian travellers will no longer be required to undergo mandatory hotel quarantine for 14 days after Ireland removed India from the list of Designated States for Mandatory Hotel Quarantine in late August. Such travellers, apart from showing the vaccine certificate, will be required to carry a negative RT-PCR result from a test taken within 72 hours prior to arrival into the country. Do note, that Indian travellers can enter Ireland 15 days after taking the last dose of vaccine.
