Léim ar aghaidh chuig an bpríomhábhar
Gnáthamharc

Citizenship Applications

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 July 2021

Thursday, 8 July 2021

Ceisteanna (130)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Ceist:

130. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Minister for Justice the plans in place to ensure citizenship cases are processed in a speedy and efficient manner; if extra staff have been allocated to the Burgh Quay office; the plans in place for increased communication with applicants; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36553/21]

Amharc ar fhreagra

Freagraí scríofa

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 it has not been possible to hold in-person citizenship ceremonies since March 2020.

This has further exacerbated significant delays which arose from a High Court case in 2019, which was subsequently successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal. Unfortunately that resulted in the loss of over six months’ processing time, before the appeal resolved the issue.

This accumulated delay in 2019 combined with the impact of the pandemic since March 2020 means that, regrettably, there are just over 24,600 applications currently on hand. These applications are at various stages of processing, ranging from those just received to those where a decision has been made and are "ceremony ready".

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. I am glad to say that almost 3,900 people have received their certificates so far and approximately 900 more have returned their documentation and will be receiving their certificates in the coming weeks.

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. This includes the introduction of eTax clearance and eVetting; rolling out online payments; revising the immigration website to make it more accessible and user friendly for customers; and launching the first chatbot ‘Tara’, which has answered more than 30,000 customer queries since last November.

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.

Barr
Roinn