Average waiting time for citizenship applications now 22 months
Irish Legal News reported on July 8th that the average wait time for citizenship applications currently sits at 22 months.
This figure is said to represent an improvement on the figures from 2021, where the average wait time was reported to be 23 months. In 2017, however, the average citizenship application took just 7 months to process.
Although it was present beforehand, the backlog was certainly not helpd by the Covid-19 pandemic. Further time was lost during the High Court, and subsequent Court of Appeal, case of Jones v Minister for Justice and Equality [2019] IEHC 519, where 6 months of processing time was lost.
A total of 7,967 applications have been decided in 2022 so far. There were 11,512 applications decided in 2021.
Helen McEntee, the justice minister, said she was “deeply conscious of how important the granting of naturalisation is to those who apply for it”.
“A significant effort has been made by my Department to issue decisions on the oldest applications in the system,” she added.