Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to Deputy Mitchell for not answering her earlier question. It was a hard question and I ask her to give me a bit more time to think about it. The Department has made considerable savings over the last three years in respect of money and staff numbers. I pay tribute to the staff of the Department for meeting increased demands for services with fewer people and resources.

We expect the online service for renewal of passports for adults to be available worldwide by the end of 2013. I thank members for their complimentary remarks about the passport service. We have seen a significant improvement in the service over the course of last year. The performance target for 2012 was to process 60% of passport express applications within ten days and 90% within 15 days. In 2012 we managed to process 78% of passport express applications within ten days and 99.55% within 15 days. As of 30 September 2012, 529,152 passports have been produced this year, which represents an increase of almost 4% on last year’s figure. We also intend to introduce a different counter management system and an appointment system in order to address the issue of queueing. We are now at the upper end and are probably world leaders in terms of security of our passports. We intend to introduce a higher specification passport booklet next year to further enhance the security of Irish passports and reduce the potential for abuse.

Deputies Smith and Crowe raised the issue of the Irish abroad. We are trying to address two situations. The first is the longer term emigrant, that is, people who emigrated in the 1950s and 1960s and in many cases sent back remittances to Ireland. Some of these emigrants are living in difficult circumstances and we continue to provide support to emigrant services in the UK and the United States. These kinds of support services tend to be more heavily dependent on grant aid from the Department, whereas younger emigrants are more dependent on consular services.

We have opened an emigrant support service in Toronto in Canada and are working with the Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration to support our emigrants. When the Canadian Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, visited Ireland last week he announced an increase in the number of visas available to Irish people working in Canada, as well as an extension in the validity of visas from one to two years.

The GAA makes a significant contribution by acting as a point of contact with younger emigrants. We are working with the GAA to provide support to young emigrants.

The total number of consular cases is higher than 1,500 but this is an estimate of the serious cases which require a degree of attention. It is difficult to predict the number of cases in a given year but our estimates are based on experience.