The recent high court judgement in Ireland has sent jitters to prospective applicants naturalizing for citizenship. The court required unbroken residence requirements with physical presence in the territory for one year before being granted citizenship.
INIS announced that the department continues to accept and process citizenship applications and citizenship ceremony will take place in time. INIS also asked applicants who are planning to apply for citizenship is to continue to collect all the necessary proofs that support your application and to submit a comprehensive application form. INIS has further said that the recent ruling has consequences for anyone who has already obtained citizenship under the Act.
The Minister of Justice in response to the high court judgement told parliament that his department working on a system that would allow practically temporary absences to naturalize for citizenship.
On Thursday 25 July 2019, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan obtained Cabinet approval for a proposed Bill, which seeks to resolve the issue that has arisen in the recent High Court judgment. The Minister’s said intention is to work with the Office of the Attorney General and instruct the Office of Parliamentary Counsel to have a bill drafted on an urgent basis and before the Houses of the Oireachtas for consideration in mid-September as soon as the recess ends.
In respect of the judgment itself, yesterday (25 July 2019), a date was set for an appeal to be heard by the Court of Appeal.
The Minister of Justice Deputy Charlie Flanagan told in parliament last week “I am aware that the recent judgment of the High Court relating to continuous residency under Section 15(1)(c) of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956 (as amended) has given cause for concern. The matter remains before the courts and is therefore sub-judice.
I do however, want to assure the Deputies that I am taking all appropriate steps to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Various options to resolve the matter are under active consideration and detailed consideration of these options is underway by officials of my Department in consultation with the Attorney General’s Office. The aim is to put in place a practical system that recognises that temporary absences from the State are allowed when determining the residence requirements for citizenship. The Citizenship Division of my Department is continuing to receive and process applications.” he told the parliament
As of 17 July 2019, provided by the minister, there were approximately 12,500 applications on hand. To date this year a total of 2952 adults and 671 minors have been naturalised for Irish citizenship.
The Irish citizenship processing time takes around 6 months for a standard application to be processed from the date it is received to the date a decision is made. The average processing time from the date an application was received to the date a decision was made was 6.7 months in 2016, 7.2 months in 2017 and 6.5 months in 2018.
Additional checks with state agencies which in turn may require liaison with counterparts in other jurisdictions can result in some applications taking longer than this average timescale. These checks are fundamental to maintain the legitimacy of the naturalisation process both nationally and internationally.
Brexit concerns caused increase in number of citizenship and passport applications for Ireland. A recent stud ranked Ireland having the second best citizenship benefits in the world with a powerful european passport.
