John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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195. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of applications for naturalisation that are currently being processed by the citizenship division of his Department; the number of these that have been outstanding for more than eight years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12876/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I want to assure anyone who has an application for naturalisation submitted that the Citizenship Division of my Department is doing everything possible to progress applications as quickly as possible.

I can inform the Deputy that there are approximately 45,000 open naturalisation applications and 321 applications open which are older than 8 years.

Insofar as older applications are concerned, my Department is currently carrying out an exercise to establish whether these applications are still being pursued by the applicant, or whether such applications can be closed. Typically the last action on these cases will have been a request from my Department for further or clarifying information.

Applications can remain outstanding for a number of reasons, including where the applicant has requested their application be suspended or where information has subsequently come to light that requires further investigation.

Where further information is requested from an applicant but has not yet been received, several reminders are sent. Where no response has been received from an applicant for a significant period of time, the application will be deemed inactive.

In just over two years, the Citizenship Division of my Department has gone from processing around 12,000 applications a year to processing over 20,000 applications in 2023, and made nearly 31,000 decisions in 2024.

Citizenship Division have taken a significant number of steps to speed up the process for applicants. These included introducing an online digital application, online payments, and the introduction of eVetting.

I am pleased to inform the Deputy that these changes are dramatically reducing processing times. The median processing time for a decision on an application in 2024 was 8 months, down from 15 months in 2023, and 19 months in 2022.

I expect that going forward, the vast majority of applicants will continue to receive a decision within one year, however, it is important to note that no two naturalisation applications are the same and some take longer than others to process. Given the importance of citizenship, robust and comprehensive checks must take place on each application. Some international checks can take a considerable amount of time and these are largely out of the control of my Department.