Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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1090. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will provide in tabular form the number of citizenship ceremonies held since March 2011; the location of same on a county basis; the cost per ceremony; if individual applicants must pay for the citizenship ceremony; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37853/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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On taking up office, I had substantial concerns that no appropriate arrangements existed to give proper recognition to the importance of a person being granted Irish citizenship. Under then existing arrangements a local district court clerk arranged for a person granted citizenship to take an oath before a District Court Judge and the new citizen subsequently received their Certificate of Naturalisation by post. In addition to arranging dedicated ceremonies with appropriate dignity and recognition of what a major and important event it is to become an Irish citizen, the introduction since March 2011 of citizenship ceremonies has prevented the build up of a huge strain on court time due to the large increase in the number of decisions made on naturalisation applications.

A total of 77 ceremonies have been held to date involving a total of 38,400 persons. A further ceremony day planned to take place on 21 October 2013. 72 of the ceremonies have taken place in Dublin, while 2 were held in Templemore in August 2011, 2 in Cork in December 2011 and 1 in the INIS offices in Tipperary Town in November 2012.

The average ceremony cost to date, excluding staff and processing costs, is just over €4 per applicant with recent large scale ceremonies costing under €4 per applicant. While ascribing a precise cost to the previous system of naturalisation is difficult at this remove, the indications are that this was significantly more costly given that it involved the diversion of court time and facilities as well as postage costs. Moreover, as mentioned above, the courts system would have been overwhelmed by the volume of cases which have been approved in the past two and a half years.

Attending a citizenship ceremony is free for all naturalisation applicants and their guests, while providing a sense of dignity and occasion that serves to underscore the importance to both the State and the applicant of the granting of Irish citizenship.