Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the considerable progress that has been made, particularly with the Passport Express service.

I have one question. I must get a lesson from Senator Walsh as to how to go about this because he was more successful that I was. Somebody I knew had a passport stolen on a Saturday. It would have been on the system that the passport was not out of date and there would have been an immediate police report when it was discovered lost. The person was due to travel on the Monday and there was no accommodation forthcoming from the Passport Service. Mr. Nugent stated that there are 600 cases that do not come under emergencies and I wonder has he identified what some of those 600 are. I accept Deputy Crowe's point that there have been abuses by TDs in the past when there was a direct line, but there are genuine cases. The case I mentioned was one. The flight fare was lost, as was the hotel accommodation because it was too soon to get any sort of refund on it. It cost quite an amount. If there had been some way to have even paid a nominal fee to have got a passport quickly, in this case which I knew was genuine, where the passport was stolen and it was reported immediately, the details would have been there. I wonder how Mr. Nugent will look at those cases.