Barry Ward (Fine Gael)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. The issue I wish to raise today relates to the foreign birth registry. This is in respect of children who are de facto Irish by dint of their parentage but who are born outside the island of Ireland. Specifically, I refer to grandchildren of Irish-born grandparents or the children of parents who were Irish at the time of their birth. It does not apply to children whose parents were born on the island of Ireland, because they automatically can apply for a passport. If, for example, your parent is Irish but was not born in Ireland, maybe because they were living abroad at the time or because they were naturalised, you have to go through the rigmarole of being put onto the foreign birth registry before you can apply for your passport, to which you are entitled. In the first instance, there is no doubt about the entitlement of these children to citizenship. Their parents or parent, or grandparents or grandparent, are Irish. That gives them an automatic right to citizenship. This is a processing issue. There are children all over the world and in this country who happen not to have been born on the island of Ireland who now have to go through this administrative rigmarole to get on the foreign births register in order that they can apply to have their Irish passports and enjoy the benefits they bring. In the interim, however, they do not enjoy those benefits and have to work on the passport of whichever nationality they assume, through either where they were born or whatever other means.

That is all fine, or at least it would be if it did not take so long to get onto the foreign births register. I understand the importance of the integrity of this system and that, when the Department of Foreign Affairs is establishing the veracity of somebody's parentage, birth or whatever it might be, that must be followed. That is fine, but it is taking more than two years in many instances. I was contacted by somebody in the past week whose son was born in Spain. He is Irish but he was not born on the island of Ireland. He applied for registration on the foreign births register in July 2023. He was in touch with the Department in the past week or two and was told it would be another six months before he gets an answer. That is a preposterously and unnecessarily long time, and this relates to EU country. It is not a country outside the EU where citizens need to be verified or where, perhaps, we do not have an embassy on the ground, which I could understand might slow matters down. It is a western European, developed nation whose systems we can rely on whereby, when it presents a birth certificate that lists the parentage and the fact of the child's birth, that is readily verifiable. I cannot understand why, therefore, it takes so long for children in such a position to be given the rights they naturally have under our law. It is very frustrating for them.

In recent years, especially since Covid, for example, we had problems with the processing of passports. The Department has done a really good job of dealing with that backlog and getting on top of the delivery of passports. The system is now excellent. The Passport Office now operates such that a person can get a passport within days of having applied for it. My daughter was born last year and we received her passport within a month of her birth. That is an extraordinary turnaround from where we were. It may be that resources have been diverted away from the foreign births register process, but can we now please deal with this issue? It is not fair for children or their parents that they would have to hang around for up to two years to have the certainty of a passport for their child in order that they can travel with ease. As long as they do not have that passport, they do not have the benefits of it, such as visa-free travel or access to other countries, including Ireland.

Will the Minister of State commit to speeding up the process for registration on the foreign births register, making life easier for parents and children alike and dealing with what is ultimately their right in an efficient and timely manner?

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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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.

Barry Ward (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State. I agree with what he said in acknowledging the excellence of the Passport Office. I would never doubt that and it does exceptional work. I also acknowledge the fact the number of applications under the scheme has increased greatly, as the Minister of State said, from about 5,000 to about 35,000 per annum, a massive increase. It is not enough to say, however, that the processing time after Covid was up to two years. We are no longer in that situation. There may be a backlog, but the application to which I refer is taking up to two years and there must be a qualitative difference between an application from a child born in Malaysia, a child born in Spain and a child born in the UK. They must all be slightly different, and it must be easier when dealing with a European Union country, such as Spain, to be able to establish more quickly the facts involved. I do not accept that nine months is a reasonable timeline, even if that is now the expected timeline. It must be faster than that. The time has come to take the resources and the attitude we took to the passport backlog and apply it to foreign birth registration. It needs to be sped up.

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I absolutely agree with the Senator's final point. The Passport Office has shown it is capable of resolving a backlog and delivering a wonderful digitised service. I am responsible for the digitisation of Government public services and that is one of the jewels in the crown. A constituent has reported to me that they went to renew a passport at lunchtime and it arrived in the post the next morning. That level of service is what people expect to see. Having to wait two years to prove that your grandmother is Irish and that you are related to her seems like a very long time. Clearly, the office has reduced the times. The passport service is saying there are cases where the documentation is incomplete and where it has to request additional documentation from the person, which can add time. It claims it should currently take between eight and nine months.

The passport service also tells me the Public Appointments Service is recruiting additional staff to meet current and forecast demands for foreign birth registration. The recruiting of additional staff is one part, and the automation and digitisation of the service is the next part. It has experienced a sevenfold increase. Clearly, whatever method it had previously for working with 5,000 applications a year does not work for 35,000. Nobody should have to wait two years to register the fact their grandparent is Irish and that they are related to him or her. That seems to be an extremely long period and it causes all manner of problems for people when they are trying to enter either employment or university and prove their citizenship. I know that the Department of Foreign Affairs will fix this, and I will mention it to the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, when I next see him.