Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

As members are probably aware, the key areas of responsibility of the Department of Foreign Affairs include foreign policy advice and co-ordination, promotion of Ireland’s economic interests abroad, management of the Irish development aid programme and the provision of passport and consular services to citizens. The associated activities and running costs are funded under two Votes.

The 2020 appropriation account for Vote 27 - International Co-operation, records gross expenditure of nearly €548 million. This represents around 63% of Ireland’s official development and humanitarian assistance. The programmes funded under the Vote are administered by the Department’s development co-operation division. The assistance is provided mainly on a bilateral basis, in direct co-operation with Government agencies in a number of targeted programme countries, or through a wide range of non-governmental agency partners. There is also significant voted expenditure on a multilateral basis, including in support of specialised UN relief and development agencies.

Expenditure on the remainder of the Department’s areas of operation is charged to Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs. Gross expenditure under the Vote amounted to €256 million in 2020. This was distributed across five expenditure programmes, defined in terms of broad strategic objectives. About three quarters of the expenditure was in the nature of administration expenses, including staff costs and the costs to provide Ireland's network of embassies and missions abroad. Most of the non-administrative expenses comprised annual contributions to a range of international organisations and grants to support services for Irish emigrants. Receipts into the Vote comprised mainly fees related to the issuing of passports and visas and other consular services. In 2020, receipts of that nature amounted to just over €34 million, representing 89% of the overall receipts retained in the account. The 2020 fee receipts represented little more than half of the corresponding receipts in 2019. This was primarily due to a significant drop in the level of passport applications in 2020, which the Department attributes to reduced demand for international travel due to Covid-19.

Because of the way in which Vote 28 is structured, the staffing and other resources dedicated to the Passport Office are not identifiable in the account. However, the annual Estimate for the Vote, published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, indicates that the expenditure in relation to Passport Office activity is charged to programme A, our people.

The Estimate for Vote 28 also discloses that the number of passports issued fell very significantly, from the peak level of almost 937,000 in 2019 to just over 450,000 in 2020. Despite the very significant drop in the volume of applications completed, the timeliness of delivery also fell back, as indicated in the Department’s performance reporting. In 2020, 88% of online passport applications were processed within 20 days. This compares to 98% of online passport applications processed within the same time period in 2019. For the typically more complicated paper-based passport applications, 87% were processed within 30 working days in 2020. This was just marginally behind the 88% processed within the same time period in 2019.

Given the nature and scale of operation of the Passport Office, there may be merit in considering whether it should have its own expenditure programme within Vote 28 and for the related application fee receipts to be separately itemised in the appropriations-in-aid listing.