Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 300: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the reason for the delay in granting citizenship to a person (details supplied) in County Mayo; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27804/08]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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An application for a certificate of naturalisation from the person referred to in the Deputy's Question was first received in the Citizenship Section of my Department in January 2008. However, due to an error on the statutory declaration, the form was returned to the person in question on 12 February 2008 so that it could be amended.

An amended statutory declaration was returned to Citizenship Section on 19 February 2008. Officials in that Section are currently processing applications received in January 2006 and have approximately 16,100 applications on hand to be dealt with before that of the person concerned. These are generally dealt with in chronological order as this is deemed to be the fairest to all applicants. It is likely, therefore, that the processing of the application will commence in mid 2010.