Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is no Fine Gael club as far as I know, Chair.

I just want to touch on the passport service. I recognise the huge pressure it has been under over the past few years. I acknowledge that the service last year was immensely improved on the previous year. I have had experience of this. Online renewals are virtually without hitch. The service is very quick, efficient and easy to use. The service can be exceptionally accommodating for what could be described as emergency cases where people have a valid medical reason, a bereavement or whatever the case may be.

However, there is a bit of a gap in what might be described as urgent cases. There might be an argument in terms of definition. We have all come across cases where people urgently need a passport, often due to issues beyond their control or in some instances because the passport was left in the top drawer and only pulled out a couple of days before going on holidays. Perhaps mammy thought that daddy was going to sort out the new baby's passport and daddy thought mammy was going to do it and they only discover it two days before the holiday of a lifetime. I presume many of the pressures we saw in the last few years have been taken off the services. Could there be a mechanism, even if it means charging people a healthy sum, to put a service in place to allow people to get those urgent passports if and when required?

I think the Minister mentioned 64,000 this year, which is essentially one month, in terms of applications made in January. How would that compare with January of last year. Are the numbers high? I imagine the numbers would have dropped a bit. The Minister mentioned that this year 10,000 each week have been contacting the customer services hub. That would suggest that 40,000 people, if not more, have been contacting the customer services hub. Usually there is a bit of anxiety or urgency that would require somebody to contact the hub. I presume that number means that some people are contacting it multiple times which would suggest they are not getting the answer they want or expect the first time. I ask the Minister to clarify that.

Considering that the former Senator, Niall Ó Donnghaile, is no longer on the committee and indeed not a Member of the Upper House, it would be remiss of me not to ask the Minister if he has plans to open a Passport Office in the North. This is frequently raised both by citizens in the North and by people living in the Border region. We acknowledge that there is less reason for people to physically go to the Passport Office, but it may sometimes still be necessary. They can do so in Dublin and Cork but cannot do that anywhere north of Dublin. It would be very appropriate to have a Passport Office in the North and to make provision for it in the budget.