Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Question:542. 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. [57354/22]
View answerTuesday, 22 November 2022
Questions (542)
Written answers
I am informed that the person referred to by the Deputy has no pending application for naturalisation with my Department. However, I can inform the Deputy that this person has made an application to the Afghan Admission Programme which was received by my Department on 11 March 2022.
My Department has received 528 applications to the Afghan Admission Programme. During the processing of these applications it has been found that in many cases applicants are missing important information, such as proof of identity and familial relationships. My Department is now in the process of writing out to proposers where the information provided was not sufficient to process their application, specifying the information that is still required. These applications continue to be assessed in a pragmatic and humanitarian manner with a view to issuing decisions soon. The Afghan Admissions Programme is an additional avenue open to the relatively small number of Afghan nationals living here to bring close family members to live here with them. There are of course a number of other options already in place through existing immigration programmes that have also been availed of by members of the Afghan community in Ireland since the beginning of August 2021 to October 2022, a total of 140 join family visas have been approved for Afghan nationals and 94 family reunification applications have been approved and the Department continues to also process these applications sympathetically.
Queries in relation to the status of individual immigration cases may be made directly to my Department by e-mail using the Oireachtas Mail facility (inisoireachtasmail@justice.ie), which has been specifically established for this purpose. This service enables up to date information on such cases to be obtained without the need to seek information by way of the Parliamentary Questions process. The Deputy may consider using the e-mail service except in cases where the response is, in the Deputy’s view, inadequate or too long awaited.