John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 153: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will consider changing the long-standing practice of issuing certificates of naturalisation only in Irish and provide a dual language version in Irish and English, as is the practice with most other official State documents including birth, marriage and death certificates and which would be a cost saving measure, as well as saving administration time for civil servants in dealing with requests for English versions of the naturalisation certificate. [16048/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I refer the Deputy to my reply to Parliamentary Question No. 114 of 2 June 2011 and Parliamentary Question No. 173 of 9 June 2011. The Irish language is the first official language of the State and it is the long standing practice of the Citizenship Division of my Department to issue certificates of naturalisation in Irish. I can further inform the Deputy that the volume of requests made to my Department in any given year for an English version of a naturalisation certificate is negligible.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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Question 154: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the position regarding a naturalisation case in respect of a person (details supplied) in Dublin 3. [16069/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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A valid application for a certificate of naturalisation from the person referred to in the Deputy's Question was received in the Citizenship Division of my Department in November, 2009.

The application is currently being processed with a view to establishing whether the applicant meets the statutory conditions for the granting of naturalisation and will be submitted to me for decision as expeditiously as possible. In that context, I can inform the Deputy that, today, I have announced steps within my Department to provide for speedier processing of applications to bring about a substantial reduction in the processing timescale. The new arrangements include improved application forms that will be available online, streamlined and accelerated procedures for certain types of application and plans to recruit interns under the new Internship Programme. Further details can be obtained from the Department of Justice and Equality website www.justice.ie.

The granting of Irish citizenship through naturalisation is a privilege and an honour which confers certain rights and entitlements not only within the State but also at European Union level and it is important that appropriate procedures are in place to preserve the integrity of the process.

I should remind the Deputy that queries in relation to the status of individual Immigration cases may be made direct to INIS by Email using the Oireachtas Mail facility which has been specifically established for this purpose. The service enables up-to-date information on such cases to be obtained without the need to seek this information through the more administratively expensive Parliamentary Questions process.