Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Question:534. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Minister for Justice the status of a citizenship application by a person (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [57346/22]
View answerTuesday, 22 November 2022
Questions (534)
Written answers
The citizenship application of the person referred to by the Deputy was approved and an invitation to the December ceremony will be issued in the coming days.
The granting of Irish citizenship through naturalisation is a privilege and an honour which confers certain rights and entitlements not only within the State but also at European Union level and it is important that appropriate procedures are in place to preserve the integrity of the process.
Applications are processed in chronological order by date received. Due to the high volume of applications currently on hand, regrettably, the median time for processing applications is 19 months.
However, my Department is taking a number of steps to speed up the processing of applications and 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.
In 2021, my Department issued 11,512 citizenship decisions, which is the highest number of decisions made since 2015, and reflects positively the significant changes undertaken to date.