Ireland has granted 10,044 citizenship certificates were issued in 2016, according to statistics report by INIS.
The top 5 nationalities awarded citizenship were
- Poland (1,328),
- India (1,028),
- Nigeria (777),
- Romania (756) and
- Philippines (730)
INIS has 6 citizenship ceremonies in 2016.
Ireland made reforms to the citizenship process in 2011, since then decisions have been made in over 100,000 applications and the processing time for the majority of standard applications has been reduced from 31 months to around 6 months.
Residence permits
All non-EEA nationals living in the State for longer than 90 days are required to register with An Garda Síochána. In 2016, approximately 96,000 new or renewed registrations of permission to remain in the State were issued.
The current top 5 registered nationalities, which account for over 48.5% of all persons registered, are Brazil (13.2%), India (12.2%), China (9.2%), USA (7.9%) and Pakistan (6%). The majority of persons with permission to remain in the State are here for work or study purposes.
Entry visas
Provisional figures indicate that 124,225 entry visa applications for both short and long stays were received in 2016, an increase of 7% on 2015, and a cumulative increase of 41% since 2012.
The overall approval rate for entry visa applications was 90%.
The top 5 nationalities applying for visas in 2015 were India (20%) China (13%) Russia (10%) Pakistan (8%) and Turkey (5%).
The number of re-entry visas applications processed in 2016 was over 45,000, an increase of 12% on the 2015 figure.
