Mr. Michael Kirrane:

This is one of the areas on which we are under particular pressure at present because there has been an increase in applications. Earlier we were talking about increases in our staff levels. That particular area is one that is being targeted for new staff and additional staff to be assigned for processing.

As I stated earlier, without the individual case it is difficult to know why it might take that long but our aim is to get that processing time down very quickly. Indeed, we are reorganising our structure to dedicate processing headed by a separate principal officer to deal with national-type immigration schemes, which would include spouse of an Irish national and a whole lot of others, separate from EU treaty rights cases because of the volume of increase that has occurred across those two areas in the past while.