THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE who’ve paid taxes in Ireland for several years were disenfranchised at last week’s polls due to citizenship application timeframes.
Some 22,000 applications for Irish citizenship through naturalisation are pending at the Department of Justice as of late January 2011. The average waiting period is at 26 months.
Immigrants must accumulate five years’ legal residency (one year if married to an Irish citizen for three years) before becoming eligible for citizenship. But delays have meant significant numbers are resident for almost a decade before being naturalised, depriving them of general election voting rights.
Aside from resident Britons, only holders of Irish citizenship can vote in general elections irrespective of their length of residency in Ireland or prior engagement with politics here.
Green Party activist George Enyoazu from Nigeria was among those affected last Friday.
Enyoazu, who contested the 2009 local elections in Dundalk, assisted former Senator Mark Dearey in his canvassing, but wasn’t able to vote for his colleague as he’s been awaiting a decision on his citizenship application for “nearly three years”. He agreed he felt “left out”.
Nigerians, Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis and South Africans are the top nationalities applying for citizenship. Applicants must “intend in good faith to continue to reside in the State after naturalisation” and be “of good character”.
Of “valid eligible applications” decided upon in 2010, 81 per cent were approved, says the Department of Justice. Asked for main reasons for refusal, a spokesperson underlined that applications are “decided individually”.
- Naturalised citizens have spoken of feeling ignored by politicians and their campaigners during canvassing.
Fidèle Mutwarasibo, integration manager with the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) and originally from Rwanda, remarked: “I know from personal experience that when I answer the door to canvassers and they see I am not of Irish origin, they lose interest immediately.”
The ICI ran a Count Us In initiative before the recent polls, which aimed to remind political parties and candidates that thousands of voters were originally from abroad.
