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THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice is temporarily fast-tracking citizenship applications of people who have been waiting over two years for a response – but says it cannot process healthcare workers’ applications as a priority, as it doesn’t have the system to do so.
There are around 24,000 citizenship applications in the system, including a backlog of 4,000 applications that are in the final processing stages.
The Department has said that by the end of this month, the Department will have been in touch with these 4,000 applicants, most of whom will have been in the system for over 30 months.
A further 2,500 applicants will be contacted by the end of June. By then, the Department will have contacted all of those who were in the system for two years as of 30 December.
The Department said that it cannot prioritise the citizenship applications from healthcare workers, as the system doesn’t categorise applicants in this way, but it added that many healthcare workers would be in the group of applicants waiting for over 2 years.
Groups representing immigrant healthcare workers have welcomed the Department’s pledge to prioritise processing citizenship applicants in this way.
Dr Liqa ur Rehman, IMO member and co-founder of the Train Us For Ireland group – representing non-EU doctors who are calling for greater access to Irish courses to allow them to up-skill – said that those who have been waiting for over two years are now “receiving positive responses”.
Dr Liqa said that they had been told once the backlog is cleared, within 6 months, the Department has said that efforts will be made to improve the system.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has also heard concerns from this group recently, and has been in touch with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee about the issue.
France and Canada are among the countries that have offered a fast-tracked or streamlined process to residency for doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers.
How the process works during the pandemic
At the moment, applications for Irish citizenship can be sent after five years of being resident in Ireland. When an application is sent, it should be processed within 6-12 months but often takes longer – with some healthcare workers’ applications still being reviewed four years after first applying.
The Department of Justice announced a system on 18 January that would allow new citizens to complete their application by signing a statutory declaration of loyalty.
This was an attempt to clear the backlog of applications while citizenship ceremonies are on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This system will be in place on a phased basis until citizenship ceremonies can resume, the Department said.
Groups representing immigrant healthcare workers had called on the government to process the applications of healthcare workers as a priority given their essential work during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the Department of Justice said that it was “prioritising applicants who have been in the system for some time and, while this measure is not exclusively aimed at non-EEA doctors, this cohort does includes many non-EEA doctors.”
The Department acknowledged the “crucial role of all healthcare workers”, and said that it had met with the Train Us For Ireland group recently.
“The processing times for citizenship applications was among the topics discussed and officials from the Department’s Immigration Service will continue to liaise with Train Us For Ireland in relation to this issue.
All applications for a certificate of naturalisation are processed and assessed individually in accordance with the relevant legislative provisions. There is no provision under the legislation to differentiate between cohorts of applicants, for instance on the basis of nationality, ethnic origin or occupation.
“Details about an applicant’s category of employment and other relevant data or identifiers are not maintained by the Department’s Immigration Service.”
The Department said that Irish citizenship “is a privilege and an honour” that requires the appropriate procedures “to preserve the integrity of the process”.
Dr Liqa said that groups representing doctors waiting to hear back about their citizenship applications are satisfied with the Department’s actions.
These include the Association of Pakistani Physicians and Surgeons EU – Ireland (APPS EU- Ireland); the Egyptian Doctors Association Ireland (EDAI); the Sudanese Doctors in Ireland (SDI); and the Afghan Council of Ireland (AFI).
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Why is his current Government turning out to be a “can’t do “ Government.? This is everywhere especially at local government level. Look at housing, passports, waiting lists, environment issues like the care of our countryside and towns. We are not served well and too docile to complain. They are using Covid and other excuses for their laziness. They are not living up to their promise and drafting long/winded reports so that they can procrastinate.
Remember the expression “ where there’s a will there’s a way. Come on and get the finger out or you will be forgotten about in the next election.
@Irish big fellow: they’ll be forgotten about and they’ll swan off with their nice big pensions and fine big bank accounts and pat them selves on the back every day telling them selves they did an outstanding job of it all..drove this country to its knees yet again. AGAIN!!!
@Irish big fellow: did you read the article, or just figure the headline being about public services it gives you carte blanche for a rant. They have gotten the finger out, not only are they fast tracking health care workers, they would be condemned for picking one sector over another anyway, but catching up and fast tracking all applications, and implementing a work around for a problem caused by lockdown.
Sounds like the finger is out to me in this regard
@Irish big fellow: Covid has replaced GDPR as the stock excuse when it comes to ‘can’t do’.
@Irish big fellow: a large part of the problem is the persistent underfunding, by successive FF/FG governments, in IT infrastructure (hardware, software) and in training of IT personnel, and the subsequent refusal by Managers in the public service (including the HSE) to invest in these things as a result. You only have to look at the HIQA report on the Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting system (CIDR) – it’s over a decade old and not fit for purpose according to HIQA. Story here:
https://amp.rte.ie/amp/1188764/
@Kevin Farrell: If you look at what government IT jobs pay they are _wildly_ out of line with reality. You can make 3 times as much in the private sector.
@Robert Lawson: The HSE management have no issue in finding the right rates for themselves though. 6 digit salaries and contributing nothing to the health service or our country.
@Irish big fellow: In 2016 I had just moved back to Dublin from abroad and we went to go watch them turn on the lights by Trinity College. It turned out to be a really popular event – hugely so! So much so, in fact, that the people in charge panicked, shut everything down, and told everyone to go home over the loudspeakers. Didn’t realize that’s how things worked around here.
@David Corrigan: And they couldn’t batch process a pile of CSVs to save their lives.
@D. Memery: ” fast tracking all applications” Only ones since December 2018 it seems. I’ve only been waiting 2 years (not 2 years 3 months) so I have doubts mine will be part of that.
@Irish big fellow: totally agree with this statement unfortunately. Very little creative thinking. The government needs less clones and more diversity.
How about creating an environment where our qualified medics actually stay here and are happy to do so, instead of pillaging developing countries for theirs which, if I’m not mistaken, contravenes a few laws already in place? Our health system is broken and fast tracking a few passports is only putting a sticking plaster on it and does little to address our reliance on doctors from outside of the island.
@Adrian O’Donnell: stop talking sense….your kind won’t be welcome round here
@Adrian O’Donnell: that doesn’t change the fact that these doctors have made invaluable continuations.
The fact that it shouldn’t have been necessary isn’t relevant. It was necessary cause there was no one else to do it — they were the ones on the ground
@Craig Clancy: well…. A decade ago we had the “best-paid Consultants in the world”…… James O’Reilly sorted that out and had significant public support to do so. The result… a predictable recruitment and retention crisis that continues today. FG could use the money spent on locums and agencies to address this in the morning.
Are we going to agree to pay Consultants €240k for a public-only contract and allow other Consultants to do a mix of private and public?
Who is looking after the covid patients in the countries these people come from?
@roscommonrebel: Because in the up to 9 years they’ve been here, no one else from their countries has gone to nursing/Ned school? The ignorance is astounding. You’d think you’d be thankful they looked after patients here otherwise the Irish HCW here wouldn’t have coped at all.
@Fiona Kyle: They came here because they make more here in a month than they’d make in a year in their home country.
We shouldn’t be poaching health professionals from poor countries, who need them more than we do.
@roscommonrebel: In fairness, who’s looking after people here when the doctors and nurses we train can make 3 times as much with better conditions in Australia, etc?
@roscommonrebel: no worries they are smarter than here and train more than their health sector can hire …. while here top scores in the leaving certificate can’t get into medicine and other health degrees …. If we are exporting 100 doctors and training 110 and have an ongoing shortage of 200 … and instead of train all the kids with the highest scores … we are hiring overseas professionals whose first language is other than English … Doesn’t make any sense
There civil servants, can’t is the first thing they learn. Is there anything else I can help you with. Now f off.
@Divad Nayr: I’d gladly tell you to f off with that attitude
Just because they are doing their job they should not get preference… it’s what they signed up for ,get in line like everyone else.
They make €2-3k per legal immigrant each year. Why would they fast track it when they’d be losing thousands per year?
They intentionally shut the passport office (since the “need” to reduce services seems to be entirely based on how many people can travel).
Why couldn’t they use their staff to go through the files? Even if they don’t have an index, and manually searching is slow and boring, passport office staff aren’t doing anything better.
Or people could just self declare, and they verify “yup the file confirms they are a doctor/nurse”. Then you don’t even need to check EVERY pending application.
I sent in my citizenship application at the beginning of December, in anticipation of my new status as a Brexshit refugee. I hope I live long enough to get the certificate.
@Jonathan Baum: And do you believe that you will make a positive contribution to your selected country? Because we’ve more than enough native cynics available so don’t really need to add to the number.
If the system doesn’t allow, change the system.
They can’t fastrack a certain segment of applications, because that would involve public-service admin employees having to go the extra mile & work harder ….
@Fiona Kyle: That’s just not correct the state charge a fee of €1000 per application, if you are refused citizenship you can apply again and it’s a €1000 each time you apply. Application fee is €175 and certification fee is €950 and approx €200 for a minor and €0 fee for a refugee/stateless persons. Scroll to towards the bottom of the webpage – https://www.irishimmigration.ie/citizenship/become-an-irish-citizen-by-naturalisation/#Adult-EU
@Charliegrl80: Not as much as Fiona Kyle said but while you’re waiting it’s €300 per year, or sometimes every few years depending on your permission. Just forked out €600 for the wife and I a few months ago. And we had to get completely ignored by the local GNIB officer, ask our TD to help, find out that there IS no local GNIB officer because the old one retired (but nobody bothered to tell us this when they said there were no appointments), then beg and plead with the Athlone officer to grumpily renew us, all so I could keep my job (a job I IMPORTED from America and goes with me if I leave) and continue to pay this government mountains of tax which, if I leave, goes with me of course, for a woefully ineffective civil service and politicians who wouldn’t understand exponential growth if you gave them a year of maths.
@Charliegrl80: it’s €1.2k for a work permit. A bit more for a visa. Every year. Then €300 for a gnib card. Then more for re-entry visas to leave the state and come back. Where in my post did I say it was that for citizenship applications?
@Charliegrl80: Almost right except that the applicant only has to pay the application fee of 175 Euro. The extra 950 Euro is only payable after the application has been approved.
How about they donate to a pet food company.
Perhaps they could get a passport quicker then ?
It seems to me that the one thing they are very good at prioritising is wage increases for politicians, shame on them.
I’d love to see the statistics of how many newly Irish citizens working in the health sector move from USA … following the steps of Irish
The taxpayers aren’t getting the return of the education and training expenditure in these professionals … maybe it’s time to rethink the whole thing.
The group of essential workers that will remain in the State are the cleaners and catering staff in hospital, clinics, nursing homes, special education centres and so on. Taxpayers defo will get a good return investing in this essential workers
Funny what can be done if you invest money here, but not if you are a healthcare worker.https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/the-immigrant-investors-ireland-welcomes-you-and-your-2m-1.4068136
@ChronicAnxiety: like I said, invest in a pet food company:)
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