Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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15. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality his views on the long waiting time for citizenship applications to be processed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25309/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am deeply conscious of how important the granting of naturalisation is to all of those who apply for it. I understand the extended wait times can be frustrating for applicants and my Department has been working hard to clear backlogs.

Last year, in 2022, there were 13,613 Certificates of Naturalisation issued to successful applicants, which includes 1,719 in respect of minors. Overall, this represents a 39% increase on the number of certificates issued for 2021, which was 9,780.

The backlogs currently being experienced are an unfortunate legacy of the pandemic when staff could only attend the office in a limited capacity. The paper based nature of the current application process meant it was very difficult to process files during that time. This, in addition to the fact Citizenship Division continued to accept applications during COVID means that a significant backlog has developed. Currently an application for Citizenship takes around 19 months to complete.

My Department is taking a number of steps to speed up the processing of applications and a number of digitisation measures have already been introduced to increase efficiency in the process. The end result of this 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 to reduce waiting times for everyone.

One such digitisation measure streamlines how e-vetting is initiated, on foot of which Citizenship Division has this week written to some 13,000 outstanding applicants inviting them to commence Garda vetting as part of their application.

While my Department works to improve processing times, and so as enhance communication with applicants, I am pleased to say that regular quarterly status updates will shortly be provided by Citizenship Division to their customers.