Liam Aylward
Ceist:888 Mr. Aylward asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the progress regarding an application for naturalisation by a person (details supplied) in County Kilkenny. [21757/01]
Written Answers. - Naturalisation Applications.
An application for a certificate of naturalisation from the person referred to by the Deputy was received in my Department on 2 April 2001 and is in the early stages of the process. I informed the House in response to such questions late last year and early this year that I intended allocating significant additional resources to the citizenship area to reduce the then processing time of two and a half years.
Additional staff have been in place for the last number of months and the average processing time for applications has now been reduced to 18 months – a reduction of 12 months on average. It is likely, therefore, that the application of the person referred to in the Deputy's question, will be finalised sometime in the second half of next year. As soon as I have reached a decision on the matter, both the applicant and the Deputy will be informed of the outcome.