Female applicants for travel to Ireland are more likely to be granted visas

Applicants from the United States had a surprisingly low rate of success in their attempts to obtain Irish visas with a little over 30pc of 62 applicants rejected.

However, citizens of Kosovo had just a fifty-fifty chance of success in their applications with 112 decisions made and 56 refusals.

People from the West African nation of Ghana were the next most likely to have a visa refused with a success rate of just 58.4pc among 286 applications.

They were followed by Nigeria from where 2,406 applications were made with 778 – or 32.3pc of the total – refused by immigration officials.

Other countries with relatively high rates of refusal included Somalia (27.8pc refused), Cameroon (26pc refused), Afghanistan (25.2pc refused), and Syria (24.5pc).

The nations with the highest rates of success in visa applications were Russia, Turkey, India, and Kuwait, according to data released under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

Last year, Russian citizens – prior to the war in Ukraine – had a 98.2pc chance of success when seeking a visa for travel to Ireland.

The rate for people from Turkey was similar with a refusal rate of just 1.9pc while 97.8pc of applications from India also succeeded.

Figures from the Department of Justice also show that female applicants for travel to Ireland were more likely to be granted visas.

Overall, across 40 different countries from which a sizable number of applications were received – a woman’s chance of being granted a visa was around 87pc.

However, the success rate for men covering the same forty countries averaged at around 83pc.

The differences were sometimes stark with nearly 76pc of all Kosovar women successful in their applications, compared to just 37pc for men.

The Department of Justice would not provide data for countries where figures relating to applications or refusals were in single digits.

They said this was done to avoid the possible identification of individuals where the number of applicants granted or refused visas was very low.

That could mean even higher or lower success rate for certain countries but where the number of applications was small.

A spokesman for the department said: “When considering the overall approval rates in visa offices and embassies worldwide, it is important that a number of factors are taken into account. All applications for visas to travel to Ireland are assessed individually, on their own merits, taking all relevant factors into account.

“Each application is subject to scrutiny by immigration officials under the criteria relevant to the type of visa being applied for. Any applicant who receives a negative visa decision will be notified of the reasons for refusal and unsuccessful applicants are entitled to submit an appeal of the decision free of charge.”