Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Conway for raising this issue. On the details of the particular application, I am not aware of it but I hear that the Senator has been in contact. I might touch on that matter in a few moments. The Senator might tell me roughly what month the child was born in and in what country. He may have given me some of that information but when he comes back, he might give me that as well.

On a general note, the Department of Foreign Affairs is responsible for citizenship by descent through the foreign births register under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. That is in respect of people who may have an entitlement to Irish citizenship and birth registration based on either their parents or grandparents.The Senator is well aware that people may apply for Irish citizenship through foreign birth registration if one of their grandparents was born in Ireland, or if one of their parents was an Irish citizen at the time of their birth, even if their parent was not born in Ireland. From what the Senator has outlined to me, the case involved definitely fits directly into that category.

Once a person is entered into the foreign births register, he or she is an Irish citizen and entitled to apply for a passport at that point. The passport comes second, but the foreign births register is the key to making everything happen. Foreign birth registration, by its nature, is detailed and complex. It can involve official documentation relating to three generations and issued by several different jurisdictions. That may not be the case with regard to the particular case to which the Senator is referring.

To protect the integrity of the citizenship process, these applications require careful processing in order to validate the identity of the applicants, the documents they have submitted and their entitlement to Irish citizenship. Accordingly, all applicants undergo rigorous and detailed checking by experienced officers in the Passport Office. I stress that in a world league, the Irish passport is in the top handful of passports that are recognised internationally as being the highest quality with regard to security checks before they are issued. This is so much the case that Ireland has two areas where people can get pre-emigration clearance heading into the USA, because they have such confidence in our regime here that they have made that facility available. It is not available in the majority of other countries.

Demand for foreign birth registration services reached an unprecedented level following the UK Brexit referendum in 2016. Prior to that, foreign birth registrations averaged approximately 5,000 to 6,000 per annum. However, post-Brexit referendum demand for citizenship via the foreign birth registration reached peaked levels in 2019 when 32,000 online applications were received. The most recent full yearly figures saw almost 28,000 applications received by the Passport Office in 2022, with current figures indicating that applications will exceed this number again this year. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the application time was normally 18 months. Foreign birth registration was also impacted by Covid-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021, as well as the unprecedented demand for passports in 2022 after the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. This service was paused for 15 months across the 2020 and 2021 period, after which the turnaround time was approximately two years. The system came to a full stop for those periods during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we have a major backlog as a result of that.

Since September 2022, a significant number of staff has been allocated to dealing with these issues in the Passport Office. Some 200 extra clerical staff have been taken on, and more than 90 permanent staff to work in areas of the service, including the area of foreign birth registration. I am happy to inform the Senator that generally this redeployment has reduced the normal turnaround period to between six and nine months. If I can get more information, I would be happy to respond in further detail.