Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 25 January 2022
481. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Justice the number of applicants waiting for a decision on naturalisation; the number of applications that have waited 12 months plus for a decision; the number of applications that have waited 24 months plus for a decision; and the average wait on a decision. [3078/22]
View answerI 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 during all levels of public health restrictions.
However, the combined impact of the 2019 High Court judgment in the Jones case and the necessary health restrictions arising from the pandemic, has resulted in the processing time for standard applications increasing.
Currently, there are just over 20,526 applications on hand, of which 8,650 applications are between 12 and 24 months in the system and a further 5,231 applications are more than 24 months. The average processing time currently is 23 months.
My Department is taking a number of steps to speed up the processing of citizenship applications. Last year, 11,512 citizenship decisions were delivered, significantly exceeding the levels achieved in the last two years.
In addition, since the beginning of this year, new applicants no longer have to submit their original passport with their application. Instead, they can provide a full colour copy of their entire passport, including the front and back covers. This is also freeing up valuable staff that up to now have been engaged in returning passports to applicants and will also help to reduce processing times.
A number of digitisation measures have also 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 to between 6-9 months for a majority of applications during 2022.
