Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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491. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of citizenship applications received from Thai nationals in 2024; and the number of these applications processed to date. [50381/25]

Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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I can assure the Deputy that my Department is doing everything possible to progress applications as quickly as possible and has 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. This digitisation has facilitated a record number of citizenship decisions made last year. 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 more than 31,000 decisions in 2024.

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 outside of the control of my Department.

The below table shows the number of applications received in 2024 from Thai nationals, and the number of certificates of naturalisation issued.

**Certificates issued in any year may relate to applications which were received in previous years due to the time taken to process applications.