117. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the number of applications for citizenship that were granted for the last 15 years in which there were no verbal interviews. [74584/26]

122. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the rejection rate for citizenship applications for each of the last 15 years. [74583/26]

123. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the number of applications for citizenship granted for the last 15 years for whom there were no checks of financial self sufficiency at all. [74585/26]

I propose to take Questions Nos. 117, 122 and 123 together.

All applications for a certificate of naturalisation are considered individually in accordance with the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended.

Applicants are required to have five years' reckonable residence in the State prior to making an application, except for spouses of Irish nationals, for whom the requirement is three years. In all cases, the final 12 months must be continuous residence in the State, with up to 70 days allowed to facilitate foreign travel for business, family or holiday purposes.

All applicants are required to satisfy the good character criterion under section 15 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. Adult applicants must undertake the Garda e-Vetting process, or such other police-vetting processes as may be deemed necessary. As part of the good character assessment, An Garda Síochána is requested to make enquiries into an applicant's background, the detail and extent of which are matters for An Garda Síochána.

There is currently no statutory requirement for an applicant for naturalisation to undergo a verbal interview or to satisfy a financial self-sufficiency test. Accordingly, the Department does not compile statistics in the form sought by the Deputy.

The Programme for Government contains a commitment to continue to implement a firmer and more sustainable migration system which protects the integrity of the State's immigration framework. In that context, the General Scheme of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill 2026 proposes a number of reforms to the citizenship process.

The General Scheme of the Bill includes proposals to:

• increase the qualifying residence requirement for citizenship by naturalisation from five years to eight years;

• introduce a power to require applicants to demonstrate proficiency in one of either English, or Irish or Irish Sign Language;

• introduce a requirement for applicants to demonstrate knowledge of Irish civics, society and politics;

• require applicants to demonstrate that they are self-sufficient; and

• make a number of other changes relating to reckonable residence and the revocation of naturalised citizenship in specified circumstances.

Since 2011, over 230,000 people have received Irish citizenship. The number of applications refused in each year from 2011 to 2025 is set out in the table below.

It is not possible to provide a refusal rate in the form requested by the Deputy. Decisions made in any given year may relate to applications received in previous years and, accordingly, the calculation of an annual refusal rate would require the manual examination of individual case records.

Table 1: Naturalisation applications refused

* Please note, all figures are correct at time of issue, however, all statistics may be subject to data cleansing.