Immigration 2023 Action Plan Published

The Department of Justice immigration action plan seeks to build on the justice plans delivered in 2021 and 2022 in an effort to promote community safety, modernise the judicial system and improve access to judiciary services, among other objectives.

This action plan has an overall goal of improving immigration services, including eliminating the backlog for immigration applications. The department seeks to make Ireland’s immigration system faster, more user friendly and more efficient, with an intention in the long term for immigration services to be provided digitally on a single online platform.

Key actions include:

• Developing a fully customer-centric immigration service
• Devising a roadmap for a single customer service function that will continue to increase the number of applications processed online;
• The elimination of backlogs for processing all immigration applications;
• Ensuring the efficiency of the Irish immigration system through new strategic policies and legislative frameworks, and
• The restructuring of immigration services to improve customer service while also maintaining the security of the immigration system

These actions do not have an impact on policy at this point but if implemented, employers hiring foreign nationals can envisage more user-friendly online platforms and improved services. The Department of Justice is expected to publish an update on its progress in mid-2023 and again, at the end of the year.

Immigration Service Delivery – Citizenship Update

The Immigration Service Delivery have announced from 20 April 2023 that persons applying for Irish citizenship will no longer be required to submit a full certified copy of their current and previous passports in support of their application.

Persons applying for Irish citizenship are required to submit a certified copy of the biodata page of their current passport only. This is a welcome development as it substantially reduces the costs and administrative burden associated with the certification of every page of an applicant’s passport.

The Immigration Service Delivery has advised that it retains the right to request original passports as part of the verification process. The decision to request an individual passport will be based on information available at the time of the processing of a person’s application.

A new version of Form 8 application form has now been released due to these changes and applicants should ensure the correct version (7.0 April 23) of the form is submitted when applying for Irish Citizenship.

Conclusion

Although the Department’s immigration action plan does not have an impact on policy at present, when implemented employers can expect a more efficient and user-friendly service with more transparency in the immigration process and consistency in decisions.

The removal of the requirement to provide a full certified copy of the passport, forms part of several measures being introduced as part of the Department’s action plan to make the process more customer-friendly.

For more information on how you can make a submission or for any queries related to employment permits or citizenship, contact a Business Immigration specialist from our Employment Law & Benefits team.

The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.