Legal immigrants fall into bureaucracy gap

WITH reference to your report headlined ‘Immigrants unable to renew permits over admin blunder’ (February 15), I wish to clarify the situation in relation to eligibility to apply for citizenship in Ireland.

To be eligible to apply, a migrant must have five years legal residence in Ireland, spread over the past nine years. Of this, the last year must be uninterrupted residence in Ireland.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland is concerned that the recent debacle which led to legally resident migrants, who were granted residency under the Irish-born child scheme of 2005, becoming undocumented as a result of a lack of coordination between two arms of the Department of Justice may affect their eligibility to apply for citizenship. This is because many of the people affected would now have accrued five years legal residence in Ireland.