Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 155: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of Irish passports issued to non-Irish residents in each of the past five years who claimed entitlement to such passports by virtue of having Irish grandparents; and the country of residency of those applicants. [16418/04]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The information sought cannot be obtained from the existing database of passport holders which does not record the basis on which entitlement to Irish citizenship is claimed by passport applicants. Compiling the information sought from paper records manually could not be done without the expenditure of a disproportionate amount of time and resources. The new automated passport issuing system, which is being developed and will be operational later this year, will have a much greater capacity to produce management information reports.

Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 156: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of Irish passports issued in each of the past 20 years to non-EU nationals under the passport for sale scheme. [16419/04]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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In the case of persons who apply for citizenship through naturalisation, it is the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who makes the decision in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Acts. Once a person has acquired a certificate of naturalisation signed on behalf of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, he or she is treated for the purposes of passport issuance in exactly the same manner as any other Irish citizen. The certificate itself does not distinguish between persons naturalised under the investment based scheme and persons otherwise naturalised.

My understanding from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is that a total of 107 investors were naturalised under the now defunct scheme. In addition, 76 dependants were naturalised. These 183 persons are not separately classified for passport issuance purposes for the reasons outlined.

Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 157: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of Irish passports issued to new applicants in each of the past five years. [16420/04]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The following are the figures sought by the Deputy:

The Passport Office records system contains details of first time applicants resident in Ireland. However, similar information is not readily available in respect of passports issued by overseas missions which comprise approximately 15% of all passports issued annually. Accordingly, the annual percentages of first-time applicants in Ireland have been used to estimate the numbers of first-time applicants abroad and these combined are shown in the table above.

The percentage of first-time applicants relative to the total number of applicants in Ireland over the past five years has been in the region of 42% to 44% annually.

Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 158: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of Irish passports issued in each of the past five years. [16421/04]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table.

Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 159: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of Irish passports issued in each of the past five years to children born here of non-EU nationals. [16423/04]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The information requested is not available as parents of an Irish born child are not required to indicate their country of citizenship on the passport application form.