John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Moving on to Vote 28, I have two further questions that are linked. I will have a couple more after that.

I commend Ms Byrne and the team in the Passport Office. There was some criticism earlier in the year, given the pressures the Passport Office was under and the backlogs that were there. I commend everyone in the Passport Office. A phenomenal amount of work was done, with 1 million passports issued. I came under a lot of pressure from people waiting for passports. Whether they did not apply in time or whatever else, some people, unfortunately, missed out on holidays. I welcome the additional money going in and the additional staff. I just hope that next year there are not the same pressures on the system and on me and other public representatives. Maybe we could get assurances that some of the challenges we experienced this year will not arise next year. I have asked the Minister the question about a division of the Passport Office in the North many a time, as has my colleague, Senator Ó Donnghaile. Other Deputies have asked for an office in Cork, Galway or Sligo, but there is, I would strongly contest, a geographical need for a passport office in the North, given the huge number of Irish citizens in the North applying for passports. What assessment has been carried out or what plans are in place in that regard?

My second question relates to the foreign births register. Again, there are serious challenges there. There is a huge backlog there in respect of processing times. There is a two-year backlog in respect of the processing of foreign birth registrations. What provision has been put in place to address that? I know that many staff, if not all staff, had been pulled away from processing registrations due to Covid, and that is understandable, but there are huge pressures there. What provision is in place to start dealing with the massive backlog there-----