Citizenship Ceremonies
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16
============================================================

Colm Brophy (FG), Dublin South-West

I thank the Senator very much. I will commence by referring to the line he used to conclude his contribution. Citizenship should be a moment of great pride. It should be a great moment in life for the people who go through the process. I have had the privilege and the honour of being a Minister of State at these processes for the past year and a half. It is an absolutely great moment. Therefore, it is incredibly regrettable that thousands of people were affected because of the circumstances taking place in our country last week. There were about 5,000 applicants but, as the Senator correctly alluded to in his contribution, there was at least probably the same number again in terms of friends and family. It is great moment, particularly down in Killarney where there is a wonderful atmosphere, and it is an absolutely wonderful day. It was shattering for them. It is also incredibly disappointing for me as a Minister of State who would have been involved, and incredibly disappointing for all the staff in the Department who worked so hard to create this really wonderful and memorable day. None of us wanted to do it. Unfortunately, we had to do it because we had to be conscious of the circumstances prevailing to ensure that people would be able to safely travel there but also to get back.
In the time allowed I want to very quickly answer a couple of the points the Senator made. We have already offered a place in June to everybody who was involved in the citizenship ceremony. We look forward to meeting them in June to share with them that joy. I fully take his point about co-ordination and putting people in place. We will work with people on passport documentation to ensure we facilitate them if an issue arises in the intervening period in regard to travel or anything else.
On balance, while during Covid it was a necessary evil, as it were, to have the ceremony online, we should not take from the moment that will be with somebody for their entire life - that really wonderful moment where they stand up in a hall surrounded by so many other people, with their family looking on, and they pledge their loyalty and fidelity to the Irish State, and they become a citizen of it. That makes it worth the while. I appreciate that there is an inconvenience for people in it, but I think it makes it worth the while and that the better solution is to have an in-person ceremony rather than reverting to an online one, which we did during Covid.
I hope that helps the Senator to understand why that decision was taken. We will work with any applicant if there is a particular issue around documentation or anything like that. The last thing we want to see is people discommoded because, unfortunately, due to the actions of others, they were very much discommoded and upended in the wonderful plans that they had for the ceremony which we had to cancel.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16