Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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337. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will address the case of a person (details supplied) regarding a foreign birth registration, who has been waiting for over a year; the current timeline for processing foreign birth applications; if the measures were put in place as stated on 15 September 2022 to reduce the processing time for citizenship application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57963/22]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Demand for Foreign Birth Registration (FBR) increased significantly as a result of the Brexit vote in the UK.

In 2015, prior to Brexit, a total of 6,000 entries were made to the Foreign Births Register. In 2019, a peak number of 19,000 entries were made to the register.

The service was also impacted by necessary Covid-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021 and the unprecedented demand for passports seen to date in 2022.

The Passport Service has processed just under 19,000 FBR applications to date this year. The number of applications processed per month has doubled in both September and October, with over 1,000 processed in August, over 2,000 processed in September and almost 5,000 processed in October.

The current waiting time for FBR applications is less than 2 years from receipt of supporting documentation and the Passport Service is currently processing applications received in February 2021. The Passport Service is on track towards significantly reducing the processing time for FBR applications by the end of this year.

My Department has put in place a number of measures to address the volume of FBR applications currently on hand. Additional staff have been assigned to the processing of FBR applications in recent weeks, and will continue to be assigned in the coming weeks.

Targeted overtime has commenced for the processing of FBR applications.

The unprecedented level of staff currently working in the Passport Service will be maintained in the months ahead, allowing for the continued reassignment of additional staff to the processing of FBR applications.

The application to which the Deputy has referred has been initially processed, and is awaiting further documentation in order to progress it further. A member of the FBR team has been in contact with the applicant in this regard.