Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Okay. What the officials do not want to do is make work for themselves. I am sure that is very much their objective but we might look at the number of complaints. In 2019 the service had a record number of passports issued at 956,258. Some of that was influenced by Brexit. The service had 77 complaints on 956,258 passports and six of those were escalated to the Ombudsman. In 2022 the total number of applications received, from the data I got, was 766,000, though it is more than that now, but the service had 359 complaints and 90 of those have been escalated to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman had engagement with the Passport Office and did not instruct it do anything but made some suggestions. Apparently, the Passport Service took some of the suggestions on board. What were the suggestions and which of them did the service take on board?