Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Foreign Affairs is responsible for processing applications for citizenship by descent through the foreign births register under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. As the Senator will be aware, people born abroad may apply for citizenship through foreign birth registration if one of their grandparents was born in Ireland or if one of their parents acquired citizenship through foreign birth registration, naturalisation or post-nuptial citizenship before their birth.

Once a person is entered on the foreign births register, he or she is deemed an Irish citizen and is entitled to apply for an Irish passport. By its nature, foreign birth registration is a detailed and complex process. It can involve official documentation relating to three generations and issued by several jurisdictions. To protect the integrity of the citizenship process, these applications require careful processing to validate the identity of the applicant, the documents he or she has submitted and his or her entitlement to Irish citizenship. Accordingly, all applications undergo rigorous and detailed checking by experienced officers at the passport service, which takes time.

I am pleased to report that foreign birth registration applications are being processed within the normal turnaround time of nine months from receipt of supporting documents. Applications that are incomplete and require the passport service to engage with applicants to ask them to submit outstanding supporting documents will take longer to process. The Department is working on the modernisation of our passport and foreign birth registration services to improve the service for those applying. Following on from the success of the online passport application system, the Department will develop a modernised online application system for foreign birth registrations. This will create a more user-friendly experience, aligning the processing of foreign birth registration applications more closely with the current systems and processes in place in the award-winning passport online service.

Demand for foreign birth registration services reached unprecedented levels following the UK Brexit referendum in 2016. Prior to that referendum, foreign birth registration applications averaged at between 5,000 and 6,000 per year. Post referendum, demand for citizenship via foreign birth registration increased significantly and has remained high. In 2023, more than 35,000 applications were received by the passport service. To date this year, the passport service has received 32,200 applications, which represents increase of more than 20% on this time last year. More than 50% of applications come from applicants who reside in the United Kingdom. Due to the dramatic increase in the number of applications post Brexit, the processing time for foreign birth registration applications stood at 18 months prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The foreign birth registration service was also impacted by Covid-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021, and in total the foreign birth registration service was paused for 15 months over the period 2020 to 2021. Once normal services resumed following the pandemic, the foreign birth registration processing time was more than two years. Since September 2022, significant additional resources have been deployed to foreign birth registration processing, and I am pleased to inform the Senator that as a result of the deployment of significant additional resources to foreign birth registration, processing time has been reduced to a turnaround time of between eight and nine months, or a 75% reduction in processing time on two years ago.

The Department is fully committed to maintaining the resources needed to assist with dealing with the high volume of foreign birth registration applications.