Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 142: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when an application for naturalisation from a person (details supplied) in County Louth will be complete; the average time for processing naturalisation applications; the measures being introduced to expedite the processing of such applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23263/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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An application for a certificate of naturalisation from the person referred to in the Deputy's Question was received in the Citizenship Section of my Department in March 2007.

Officials in that Section are currently processing applications received at the beginning of 2005 and have approximately 13,700 applications on hand to be dealt with before that of the person in question. These are generally dealt with in chronological order as this is deemed to be the fairest to all applicants. There is nothing contained in the Deputy's Question that would warrant taking this application out of sequence and treating it expeditiously.

It is likely, therefore, that further processing of the application will commence in the second half of 2009. I will inform the Deputy when a decision is reached on this application.