News of closure led to surge in applications to ‘cash for citizenship’ programme

Addressing the PAC, secretary general of the department Oonagh McPhillips acknowledged that applications for the programme had gone “through the roof” once it became clear that it was to be phased out. File photo: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

The State received nearly 1,400 applications for a ‘cash for citizenship’ programme in just six weeks at the start of the year after it was announced that the process was to be shut down.

The Department of Justice received 1,350 applications for the controversial Immigrant Investment Programme (IIP) prior to its closure on February 15, the Public Accounts Committee heard on Thursday.

The number of applications received in that timeframe was more than four times that received in the entirety of 2022, when 306 were received, equating to inward investment of €205m and an additional €1.9m received in terms of fees for processing the application.

Since the programme’s inception, a total of nearly €1.2bn had been committed up to the end of 2022 by investors applying for the programme, the committee heard.

The IIP was first set up in 2012 and saw wealthy individuals from third-party countries gain five-year citizenship rights within Ireland in exchange for a minimum investment in an Irish enterprise of €1m over three years. More than 94% of the applications which had been approved were from Chinese nationals.

Addressing the PAC, secretary general of the department Oonagh McPhillips acknowledged that applications for the programme had gone “through the roof” once it became clear that it was to be phased out.

At present, the department has roughly 3,000 outstanding valid applications under review, she said. She said that while the scheme had had a “positive effect”, that impact no longer outweighs the risk associated with it.

Concerns

Under questioning from Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy, Ms McPhillips said that the Department had been concerned about the programme for some time, leading to it commissioning a review of the process by consultants EY in 2019. She said while the report of that review has never been published, she hopes to do so in the coming weeks.

Of that review, she said that EY “didn’t express concern about our scheme, they expressed concerns about such schemes in general”. Such investment programmes became widespread across the EU in the wake of the economic crash.

Ms McPhillips said that areas of concern regarding the programme included “the proportionality, the domination of one particular country” in terms of applicants. While the vast majority of applicants to the Irish scheme were Chinese, she noted that in the case of the UK’s scheme, which shut in 2022, the dominant nationality had been Russian applicants.

The secretary general said that the closure of the UK scheme in March of last year “had had a significant impact on the risk environment”. “Everything changed in 2022,” she said.

She was quizzed by Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster regarding an abortive €43m investment in the Nuremor Hotel and Country Club in Co. Monaghan dating from 2020, which saw an IIP visa delivered to applicant investors despite the business subsequently entering liquidation.

She said she could not discuss an individual case when more than 3,000 applications are outstanding, but added that the department has no responsibility for the investment itself, only for its relationship with the applicant.