Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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148. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the average waiting time for decisions on naturalisation applications; the shortest time in which a positive decision has been given within the last five years; the longest time a decision has taken within the last five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24891/25]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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149. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality to outline the steps that are taken in making a determination on a naturalisation application; whether these steps are taken with respect to every single naturalisation application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24892/25]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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150. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality whether his Department has statistics for average waiting times for decisions on naturalisation applications by original nationality of the application, if so, to provide the names and time periods of the five countries with the longest waiting time and the five countries with the shortest waiting times; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24893/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 148, 149 and 150 together.

I can advise the Deputy that all applications for a certificate of naturalisation are assessed individually in accordance with the provisions of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. A determination on whether an applicant satisfies the statutory criteria for naturalisation can only be made after an application is received.

Applicants are required to have 5 years reckonable residence in the State prior to making an application, except for spouses of Irish nationals where the requirement is 3 years. In all cases, the final 12 months must be continuous residence in the State with up to 70 days allowed to facilitate foreign travel for business family or holiday purposes.

The naturalisation application processing times of individual nationalities are not recorded by my Department.

It is not possible to provide statistics to the Deputy on the shortest and longest timeframe to make a decision on an application within the last 5 years. This would require the manual examination of thousands of cases. Such an examination would require a disproportionate amount of time to compile.

I can assure the Deputy that the Citizenship Division of my Department is doing everything possible to progress applications as quickly as possible.

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 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. Unfortunately, some international checks can take a considerable amount of time and these are largely out of the control of my Department.

The below table shows the total number of applications received from 2020 to 2024, and the median application processing time for each respective year.