Ireland while just recently ranked as the best golden visa scheme with best citizenship in the world, has been hit by slow approvals and long processing times.
The Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) dubbed as irish golden visa, was introduced in April 2012 to encourage inward investment and create business and employment opportunities in the State.
According to the latest figures released by government, zero applications have been approved in 2019, for 2018, only 54 applications had been approved out of 421 applications received.
The processing times of INIS vary between 6-9 months per application and in some cases 12-24 months (1-2 years)
The breakdown of the figures also show that only 50 applications have been approved in five years for endowment.
For 2019, only 30 applications have been received and enterprise and endowment options have been most popular among investors. Endowment requires €500,000 donation to the state in exchange for permanent residence in Ireland.
The Minister of Justice while answering a parliamentary session said that in 2018, the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) introduced a number of enhanced control mechanisms to ensure the programme operates to the highest standards including personal and financial checks. This has led to a temporary increase in processing times in this calendar year, and decisions on a significant number of 2018 applications will be made in the coming weeks.
| Enterprise Investment | Endowment | Investment Fund | REIT | |
| 2019 | ||||
| Applications | 20 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Approvals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | ||||
| Applications | 315 | 75 | 31 | 1 |
| Approvals | 27 | 12 | 15 | 0 |
| Value of Approvals € | 26,000,000 | 4,800,000 | 15,000,000 | 0 |
| 2017 | ||||
| Applications | 228 | 46 | 50 | 1 |
| Approvals | 197 | 42 | 49 | 0 |
| Value of Approvals € | 197,000,000 | 18,700,000 | 49,000,000 | 0 |
| 2016 | ||||
| Applications | 253 | 5 | 32 | 1 |
| Approvals | 197 | 5 | 31 | 1 |
| Value of Approvals € | 101,500,000 | 2,400,000 | 15,500,000 | 500,000 |
| 2015 | ||||
| Applications | 55 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Approvals | 55 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Value of Approvals € | 27,500,000 | 500,000 | 150,000 | 0 |
An independent external review of the IIP is under way and it is expected that the review will be concluded in the second half of 2019.
