Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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192. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the current waiting times for citizenship applications by EEA and non-EEA applicants in tabular form. [36549/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I am deeply conscious of how important the granting of naturalisation is to those who apply for it and my Department continued to accept and process citizenship applications throughout the pandemic and during all levels of public health restrictions.

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.

In addition, the combined impact of the 2019 High Court judgment in the Jones case and the necessary health restrictions arising from the pandemic, has unfortunately resulted in the processing time for standard applications increasing.

The current average processing time for naturalisation applications is 22 months. However it should be noted that, last year, my Department made 11,512 citizenship decisions, which is the highest level since 2015. To date this year, 7,967 citizenship decisions have been made. A significant effort has been made by my Department to issue decisions on the oldest applications in the system.

As previously advised to the Deputy, statistics are not maintained by my Department to provide for a breakdown between EEA and non-EEA applicants. However, to be of some assistance to the Deputy, I have provided in the table below the average processing time in months for citizenship applications for the years 2015 – 2021 and to date in 2022.

The citizenship application process is reviewed on an ongoing basis to continually improve customer service quality. Feedback from applicants is taken on board and, as a result, a much more simplified, customer-focused and streamlined mechanism for applicants to provide their proofs of residence has recently been introduced.

To further speed up the processing of applications, 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. Additional staff have also been assigned to the citizenship team.

Since the beginning of this year, new applicants for citizenship no longer have to submit their original passport with their application. Instead, they can provide a full colour copy of their entire passport, including the front and back covers. This change in practice is welcomed by our customers and is also freeing up valuable staff time that up to now has been engaged in returning passports to applicants.