Citizenship Trough Naturalization - processing time

ResearchWill

Claire McCarthy Cork wrote: »

In fairness to them, the Department of Justice are dealing with huge numbers - more than 25,000 in 2010 according to their Annual Report.

Still, the continuing delays are not good enough, and human rights groups have been campaigning for change (you'll find lots of info about that here: http://www.nascireland.org/campaigns-for-change/naturalisation/). The main issue is, perhaps, inconsistency. Why do some people receive a decision in under a year, while others wait, two, three, even four years for an answer?

The High Court used to say that the issue of delay was none of its business, since the decision whether to grant naturalisation is at the absolute discretion of the Minister for Justice. More recently though, a High Court decision confirmed that unreasonable delays in immigration and naturalisation decisions can be challenged (more info here: http://cmcsolicitor.ie/wordpress/news-2/). The man in question, from Iraq, has been waiting four years for a decision, with no explanation. Crazy. He has been granted leave for Judicial Review, and the case is pending. This is a deja vu case, which makes it even more daft...

The first High Court case where delay was found to be unreasonable also involved an Iraqi refugee, Mr. Salman, who had been waiting four years without explanation for a decision in his case. In that case, the Department never requested any additional documents or information, and they refused to say what was causing the delay. The Judge said that there was no evidence that there was a fair system in place for dealing with the applications in chronological order - the Department's letters simply stating that applications are dealt with in chronological order were not evidence that they were, in fact. The man was granted naturalisation on the eve of the hearing, but the Judge still examined the law in his Judgement, and granted the applicant his costs (ie said the state should pay his lawyers for him). The judgement makes a good review of the law - you can read it on the Courts Service website, here:
http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/09859e7a3f34669680256ef3004a27de/383d7d39af64ab8180257995004d4d11?OpenDocument

If you have been waiting a long time, and the delay is affecting your life, it might be worth writing a letter to the Citizenship section to let them know that. For example, maybe you can't travel for work because you need to apply for visas to go anywhere, or travel is difficult because you have a refugee travel doc? Mr. Salman is a refugee, and he had to stop travelling out of Ireland because of the hassle he had crossing borders with his travel doc every time. He had written to the Citizenship Section to explain that, and the judge mentioned that in his judgement. This is just an idea, not legal advice!

Good luck with your applications, future good citizens of Ireland!

Yes Salman has reopened the issue of Delay, may have got the good decision due to the fact that the matter stayed in the normal JR list and not the Asylum list. While certain judges in the Asylum list have stated Obiter that 4 or 5 years they may consider delay. I believe if anyone has been waiting more than 3 and a half years they will need to speak to a solicitor, as the taking of JR should never be taken lightly.

Claire McCarthy Cork

ResearchWill wrote: »

Yes Salman has reopened the issue of Delay, may have got the good decision due to the fact that the matter stayed in the normal JR list and not the Asylum list. While certain judges in the Asylum list have stated Obiter that 4 or 5 years they may consider delay. I believe if anyone has been waiting more than 3 and a half years they will need to speak to a solicitor, as the taking of JR should never be taken lightly.

Agreed. Thanks for that info ResearchWill