Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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604. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the current average waiting times for naturalisation certificates, in tabular form. [11738/22]

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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605. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of persons waiting zero to six months, six to 12 months and more than 12 months for a certificate of naturalisation, in tabular form [11739/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 604 and 605 together.

The statistics requested by the Deputy are set out in the table below.

Last year, the average time from receipt of application to issue of a decision was 23 months.

For a broad range of reasons, some cases will take longer than others to process. In some instances, completing the necessary checks can take a considerable period of time.

However, my Department is taking a number of steps to speed up the processing of applications and a number of digitisation measures have also been introduced to increase efficiency in the process, including eTax clearance, eVetting and online payments. The end result of the digitisation process will be to free up more staff to focus on processing applications in a timely and efficient manner, to improve service to our customers and reduce waiting times.

Last year, my Department made 11,512 citizenship decisions, which is the highest level since 2015. Additional staff have also been assigned to the citizenship team. Based on these measures, my Department's objective is to achieve an improved timeframe of 6-9 months for decisions on a majority of applications during 2022.