Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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1125.To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the measures undertaken by her Department to reduce citizenship application processing times; the details of the average waiting time from application to the granting of citizenship in respect of applications received in each of the years 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter.[34875/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I understand the extended wait times can be frustrating for applicants. 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.

It is important to note that no two applications are the same and some take longer than others to process.

The previous backlogs in application processing in Citizenship had arisen largely due to the legacy of restrictions imposed on staff attendance in the office during the pandemic.

Since then, Citizenship Division have taken a significant number of steps to increase processing with a view to speeding up the process for applicants. These included introducing an online digital application, online payments, and the introduction of eVetting.

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 has already made more than 16,000 decisions to date in 2024.

A median in figure respect of 2024 is not yet available, however, based on current output and at current application levels, I expect that median processing time will reduce over the course of the year.