By EUDO-CITIZENSHIP partner Iseult Honohan. 

In answer to a parliamentary question on June 13, 2013, the Irish Minister for Justice confirmed a significant increase in of grants of citizenship by naturalisation since 2009. These have risen from 1,529 in 2002, and 6,100 in 2009 to 23,400 in 2012. This is a result not only of increased numbers of people becoming eligible from the inward migration of the last twenty years, but more specifically of a recent acceleration in processing naturalisation applications. While previously the officially stated processing time had been 25 months, in many cases this took considerably longer, and there was a high rate of rejection. In addition to the administrative streamlining, a Citizenship Application Support System, funded by the Office of Migrant Integration and operated by an NGO, the New Communities Partnership, was introduced to provide information and advice on applications, and to reduce the number of applications returned for further attention.

Read the Minister’s full reply.