Ivor Callely
Question:124 Mr. Callely asked the Minister for Justice the number of people who applied for Irish citizenship in 1990; and the number who were successful.
Written Answers. - Citizenship Application Statistics.
The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Acts set out three ways in which a person, not born in Ireland, may acquire Irish citizenship. These are through registration in the foreign births register of the birth abroad of persons whose parents or grandparents were Irish citizens, declaration of acceptance of post-nuptial citizenship by the spouse of an Irish citizen and by being granted a certificate of naturalisation.
The foreign births register is maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs and, therefore, any questions concerning the register should be addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
In the case of those applying for post-nuptial citizenship applications can be made either to Irish diplomatic missions or consular offices in the case of persons living abroad or to the Department of Justice in the case of persons resident in Ireland.
In the case of those applying abroad I am informed that 561 such applications were made and referred to the Department of Foreign Affairs last year. Of these 222 were passed to the Department of Justice for acceptance, queries were raised in the case of 124, 13 were refused while 202 were awaiting attention at the end of the year.
In the case of those applying to the Department of Justice records are not maintained in such a way as to enable a figure for the number of applications in a year to be given but 204 applications were accepted during the year.
The number of files opened relating to applications for certificates of naturalisation and the number of certificates issued in 1990 were 374 and 179 respectively. A file can, however, contain more than one application and the certificates which issued in 1990 do not necessarily refer to applications received in that year. The computation of the exact number of applications received in 1990 and the number of certificates which issued in 1990 in respect of those applications would require the diversion of a disproportionate amount of scarce staff resources, as records are not maintained in such a way as to facilitate the ready extraction of this information.