2286. Deputy Seán Crowe asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the average waiting time for successful naturalisation applications to be processed at present; and the number of applications currently being considered. [57073/26]

2453. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration to outline any plans there are to cut the current citizenship application processing times; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [59396/26]

I propose to take Questions Nos. 2286 and 2453 together.

I can assure the Deputy that the Citizenship Division of my Department 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. 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 more than 31,000 decisions in both 2024 and 2025. There are currently 61,000 applications on hand. Approximately 6,000 of the applications on hand are adults who attended the June citizenship ceremonies and minors whose naturalisation certificates will issue in the coming weeks. These applications will be finalised once the certificates have issued.

The median processing time for a decision on an application in 2024 and 2025 was approximately 8 months. This was a significant improvement from the median processing time of 15 months in 2023, 19 months in 2022, and 24 months in 2021.

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.