Vol. 499 No. 3
326 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the current waiting time for the issue of citizenship; the reason for the lengthy delays; and the proposals, if any, he has to shorten these. [2730/99]
There are three ways in which a person who is not a citizen of Ireland can obtain Irish citizenship: by descent (foreign births registration), by naturalisation or by marriage to an Irish citizen (postal-nuptial citizenship). Certificates of citizenship in respect of naturalisation and post-nuptial citizenship (PNC) issue from my Department. The Department of Foreign Affairs has responsibility for the administration of foreign births registration.
At present, applications for naturalisation can take in excess of twelve months to process while declarations in respect of post-nuptial citizenship can take up to six months to process.
The decision to naturalise a person is a very serious one and of necessity the procedures involved in dealing with each application are lengthy. This has always been the case and the processing times which apply in Ireland are not longer than those in other jurisdictions about which I have information.
An added factor is the level of applications being received at any time. In this regard the number of applications received has increased considerably e.g. in 1993 the number of applications for naturalisation received was 256 while in 1997 it was 650 and, in 1998, 588.
A total of eight officers deal exclusively with naturalisation and citizenship matters in my Department. In the past, staff were diverted to other duties but I have recently restored the staffing complement of the section and this should contribute to ensuring that the processing time for applications is not unnecessarily protracted.
