Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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670. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the reason the citizenship application system is structured in such a way (details supplied); and if improvements can be made to ensure greater fairness and that applicants are not repeatedly placed at the back of the queue due to administrative delays outside their control. [65886/25]

Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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As part of my Department’s continued commitment to improving its services, an online citizenship application portal was made available in October 2023. This has made the application process easier for applicants, allowing them to easily fill in relevant forms and submit their application online.

These improvements, along with the introduction of online payments and eVetting, are having a positive impact on naturalisation processing times. The length of time taken to process an application has dropped from 15 months in 2023, to 8 months in 2024.

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.

In cases where incomplete naturalisation applications are received, the application is returned to the applicant with a request to provide the missing documentation within 28 days. A reminder is issued after 18 days if the required documentation has still not been provided.

Where an application is returned, it is taken out of the queue for processing. The citizenship application portal does not distinguish whether an application that is submitted is a new application, or a resubmitted one. Therefore, when an application is returned to an applicant and subsequently resubmitted, it will rejoin the queue on the date that it is resubmitted, not the date of the original application.

If the requested documents are not supplied within the timeframe provided, the application will be deemed ineligible and closed. Applicants are advised that it is their responsibility to ensure that all the required documents are submitted as part of their naturalisation application.

Citizenship Division have produced a guidance document for all potential applicants which outlines which documents are required for the application. This document is published on my Department's Irish Immigration website and is available here:

As an Oireachtas member, you can also request the status of individual immigration cases by e-mail, using the Oireachtas Mail facility at: IMoireachtasmail@justice.ie, which has been specifically established for this purpose. This service enables up to date information on such cases to be obtained without the need to seek information by way of the Parliamentary Question process.