Ms Siobh?n Byrne:

To give some context on what is involved in the production of a passport and the machines involved, these are industrial machines. Every printing machine has a mailing machine in tandem. The investment of these machines alone is about €3 million, and there is all of the infrastructure that needs to sit around that. There have to be passport books, and these need to be stored in a highly secure area with a vault. The machines must be in a highly secure area. There is piping, air control systems and gas. It is very complex, rather than going into too much detail. It would cost between €5 million and €6 million by the time the machines are bought and the infrastructure installed. It would cost an additional €300,000 to support those machines for a year. A significant investment would need to be made in making such a decision. We need to look at that in the context of the services we provide through our online service, that the majority of renewals are done within a fairly short time period, and a four-day service is available to people from the Cork office.