The Department of Justice has set up a special unit to deal with some 11,000 outstanding residency claims from non-national parents of Irish-born children.
In the region of 150 staff from across the civil service are being drafted in to process the claims.
Today a statement from the Department said: "They [the staff in the new unit] will be assigned to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform for a period of one year, during which time all outstanding cases will be processed."
Under Irish law, a child born in the State is entitled to citizenship and up until earlier this year it had been the practice to grant residency rights to the parents of such children.
However, a Supreme Court ruling in January rejected the automatic right of non-EU immigrants to residency in Ireland and said the State could deport the parents of Irish-born children.
The ruling has been condemned by a number of civil rights groups who say it effectively criminalises the non-national parents of Irish-born citizens.
The Minister for Justice, Mr Michael McDowell, says the outstanding cases would "be subject to individual consideration . . . to decide whether to grant leave to remain to the persons concerned or to deport them".
