Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We receive between 12,000 and 13,000 citizenship applications per year. We had challenges through the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically where the in-person citizenship ceremonies could not take place. To try to respond to that, we have made a number of different changes to the process itself to try to speed it up and make it easier for people to apply and go through the system. We have also started an online citizenship ceremony, which was a novel way to give people their citizenship. Thankfully, while Covid-19 is still here, although in a different form, we have been able to have in-person ceremonies again.

The overall timeframe for processing applications has fallen to just over 12 months. It was much longer previously. Some cases may take longer, depending on challenges that may arise, but the time is reducing even with 12,000 or 13,000 applications annually. We want processing times to be as short as possible.

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