Ms Siobh?n Byrne:

For paper applications there is no difference in the system. Regardless of whether the applicant is an adult renewing his or her passport or the most complex first-time applicant, the process is exactly the same. It is an old process. It was developed in 2004 and is on the old technology, so it is resource-intensive and very much paper-orientated. Ideally, if we were not in the demand we are in at the moment, the documentation would be scanned in, probably in the first four weeks, and then the application processed in the following four weeks, so there is an eight-week turnaround. It is taking a little longer at the moment.