Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have gone from at one point a 19-week turnaround time to somewhere between two and four weeks, which is where we plan to maintain it. We have gone from a backlog of 10,000 files to about 2,000 files on file, so it is not really a backlog and we are getting through it in two to four weeks. I offer my particular thanks to all of the staff in the section. We had to increase the staffing levels pretty dramatically - we have trebled them - and we had to do a certain amount of automation, which will help into the future as well. It is actually a money-generating area of the Department. It is one of those ironies in that we did not have enough staff, but all of the staff bring in a lot of money because employers have to pay for the permits. The fact we got sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for the extra staff made all the difference. I want to maintain them in that area so we continue to have efficient turnaround for businesses on work permits.

What happened was similar to what happened with the passports. There was a huge fall in demand during the pandemic and then it bounced back to a record level. The Senator will know that in the passport section, over 1 million passports issued this year, and it really was one of those post-pandemic effects where there was a massive snapback in demand. We were not as prepared for it as maybe we should have been, but we are on top of it now and we plan to stay on top of it. We got an extra €8 million in the budget for staffing in the Department, which allows us to maintain staff in that section and also staff up the new agencies.

We had been moving a lot of people around. We will not have to do that as much next year, which the Secretary General is very happy about.