Date: 10th May – 9th October 2025
Times: 10am – 6:45pm (last entry 5pm)
Location: Gallery at EPIC
Cost: Entry to exhibition is included in general admission tickets.
About the exhibition
On The Move: A Century of the Irish Passport is a brand-new exhibition that explores how this small booklet has facilitated connections across the globe. It also discusses how the passport provided a route out of Ireland for those marginalised at home, from members of the LGBT community to the children of single mothers who were sent abroad for adoption.
Featured Stories
Adventure
Thérèse Higgins was 21 when she sailed from Cobh to Nova Scotia in 1957. She left Ireland to be with her fiancé, Donal Linehan, who had come to Canada a few months earlier. Thérèse brought a wedding dress, wedding cake and a trunk full of wedding presents with her from Ireland. The couple married a week after her arrival.
Image: Irish passport issued to Thérèse Higgins, September 1957. Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
The ‘granny rule’
People born outside of Ireland are entitled to an Irish passport if they have an Irish-born grandparent or a parent with Irish citizenship. The recruitment of diaspora Irish footballers has paid huge dividends for the Republic of Ireland’s national team, helping to promote a more inclusive understanding of Irish identity.
Image: English-born Irish international Michael Robinson poses with his newly acquired passport in 1980. Ray McManus/Sportsfile.Ladies’ Land League. Board of Trinity College Dublin.
Image: Des Mullan was one of Ireland’s most prominent journalists at the height of his career. Photo courtesy of the Mullan family.
Irish Abroad
Father Michael J. Kelly left Ireland for modern-day Zambia in 1955. The Offaly-born Jesuit priest and academic was for many years principal of Canisius College in Chiseki. As well as his work on education reform, he was an advocate for women’s rights and for people suffering from HIV/AIDS. He became a Zambian citizen in 1968.
Image: Michael J. Kelly (1929-2021), pictured in 2017 with his old Irish passport. Private donation.
In Their Words: The Irish
Passport’s Legacy
Irish In New York
Christina Reynolds shares an emotive story of when she discovered her dad’s very first passport in the attic following his death, which he would have used to emigrate to New York in the late 1960s. Read more
Family Roots
A multi-generational story spanning from 1919, when Mae Davie boarded the SS Columbia bound for New York, waving goodbye to her Irish home, only for her granddaughter to reclaim these roots today. Read more
Return Migration
Abigail O’Reilly shares her connection to Ireland through her grandparents Bill and Jean who both hailed from Dublin, and what voting in an Irish election and having an Irish passport meant for her and for them. Read more
A 1926 honeymoon
Thomas Healy was one of the first to receive an Irish Free State passport, which he used when embarking on his 1926 honeymoon to the Algiers, alongside his new wife. Read more
Prisoner of War
An incredibly moving story where a grandson reveals the time his grandfather served in a Prisoner of War camp during WWI for being an “enemy alien”, but receiving an Irish passport nonetheless. Read more
Adopted from Ireland
A tale of a boy and his first and only Irish passport, to leave the island of Ireland, adorning a different name as he travelled to a new life in America, an a new identity as well. Read more
A Note from Our Curator
The introduction of the first Irish passport marked an important moment in the history of Ireland. A symbol of Irish sovereignty, it provided clear evidence of a commitment to engage with the world as an independent nation. Irish passports have since facilitated millions of journeys across the world, whether for work, love or intellectual freedom. The issuing of a passport often represented the start of a difficult departure from home, but for many with Irish heritage it could also be a much valued reminder of their family roots.”
Dr Catherine Healy, Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum.
This exhibition is supported by Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Emigrant Support Programme.
