Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for his question and his remarks. Earlier this week I was delighted to attend the citizenship ceremonies held in Killarney along with the Ministers of State, Deputies Collins and Buttimer. It is a wonderful ceremony to go to. We had 5,200 new Irish citizens there.

Last year the number of naturalisation applications received by the Department was 27,032. Separately, the number of people who received a letter of approval was 29,868 and 187 were refused. Despite the substantial increase in applications received in recent years, the fact processing times have significantly reduced is a huge credit to the work of the Department and the staff in that particular area. The median processing time for a decision on an application in 2024 was eight months. This is a significant improvement from the median processing time of 15 months in 2023, 19 in 2022 and 24 in 2021. The Department has taken a significant number of steps to speed up the process for applicants. These included introducing an online digital application, online payments and the introduction of evetting. This digitisation has facilitated a record number of citizenship decisions made last year. In just over two years, my Department has gone from processing around 12,000 applications a year to processing over 20,000 applications in 2023, more than 31,000 decisions in 2024 and over 32,500 to end October 2025.

I assure everyone who has an application for naturalisation submitted to the citizenship division that the Department is doing everything to progress it. However, it is important to note that no two naturalisation applications are the same and some take longer than others to process. It is important the citizenship process be robust and comprehensive. Checks are carried out on each application. Unfortunately some of the international checks can take considerable time and this is largely outside of the control of the Department. I am sure the Deputy receives, as I and many others in this House do, receive representations on that. For that reason, while I expect going forward more applicants will receive a decision within one year, it cannot be guaranteed.

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