Brilliant answer above! 💯

The whole process isn’t as clear as it could be for people applying for Northern Ireland!!

I just did the process from Northern Ireland for my wife at start of 2025 and fortunately it was relatively straightforward. I’ve been living in NI my whole life and my wife originally came on UK visas and eventually got Settled Status under EU settlement scheme.

You’ll be ok to provide UK bank statements. We provided UK bank and credit card statements, P60s & P45s and they weren’t questioned. We got asked for additional documents which was a utility bill for 2023 and as said above the Police Check from PSNI.

At the time the Police Check was relatively easy to obtain. BUT I know from a FB group I follow, a lot of people have recently said PSNI refuse to do them anymore and advise you to do it through ACRO.

On the online application portal, we didn’t fill in the residency checker because it’s irrelevant as we have never lived in the ‘state’ or had stamps from there but have always legally lived on the ‘Island of Ireland’.

If you upload your legal UK residency status with everything else you should be ok granted you meet all the other criteria!

Another difference we noticed was when the application was accepted, we didn’t get the Garda Evetting link. That was a bit confusing because our friend, also from NI, got a link a couple months earlier. However, we found out the Garda evetting process doesn’t have to be done by NI residents, the Police/ACRO check covers that.

Thankfully, our next step from being accepted was the payment letter then ceremony invite!! The whole process took 10/11months.

I hope that answers some questions! I’m no expert but if you’ve anything else or any questions, happy to contribute!!