Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 July 2021
1418. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Justice the average timeline for applications to Irish citizenship through naturalisation receiving an outcome of granted or denied; and if she will provide the current number of applications waiting in the system for over two and half years or 30 months and over five years. [41389/21]
View answerThe tables below set out the figures requested by the Deputy.
Table 1 - Average Timelines
|
Year |
Average processing time for an approval Decision (months) |
Average processing time for a refusal Decision (months) |
|
2018 |
7 |
23 |
|
2019 |
10 |
24 |
|
2020 |
12 |
35 |
|
*2021 |
23 |
155 |
* Please note that the 2021 refusal figure is skewed by the closing of a significant number of applications where the applicant had failed to engage with the Citizenship Division of my Department for several years. In order to close these applications, a refusal decision had to be recorded for each case.
Table 2 - Number of open applications
|
Over 30 months but less than 5 years |
3902 |
|
Over 5 years |
517 |
The granting of Irish citizenship through naturalisation is governed by the provisions of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. All applications for a certificate of naturalisation are processed and assessed individually in accordance with the provisions of the Act.
However, I am deeply conscious of how important the granting of naturalisation is to those who apply for it and my Department has continued to accept and process citizenship applications throughout the pandemic and at all levels of public health restrictions. However, processing rates have been negatively impacted by the necessary health and safety related restrictions imposed and by a High Court case in 2019, which was subsequently successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal.
For applicants that were in the final stages of processing, on 18 January 2021, my Department opened a temporary system to enable applicants to complete their naturalisation process by signing a statutory declaration of loyalty. Since then, my Department has delivered on its commitment to communicate with 6,500 applicants by the end of June, inviting them to complete the final steps required prior to the granting of a certificate of naturalisation. Over 4,400 people have received their certificates so far.
To further address the volume of applications on hand, additional staff are being assigned to the citizenship team; and a number of digitisation measures have been introduced to increase efficiency in the process including eTax clearance, eVetting and online payments.
The end result of the digitisation process will be to free up more staff to focus on processing applications in a timely and efficient manner, to improve service to our customers and reduce waiting times. Based on this, my objective is to achieve an improved decision making timeframe of 6-9 months for a majority of applications during 2022.
