Mr. Ger Deering:

There was a more straightforward reason. We got a quite number of complaints about the Passport Office in 2022. The Senator may remember there were long delays. It was post Brexit and there were a lot of extra people looking for passports. There had been a backlog during Brexit so we had approximately 800 complaints. Interestingly, taking those 800 complaints out as being a slight anomaly during those two years, we would probably be up approximately 400 complaints. There is a steady increase in both contacts and complaints.

When the Senator asked about whether we get feedback from customers, I should have said that while we do not get feedback from customers we have an in-house quality assurance programme where we look at a certain percentage of complaints we have dealt with to glean feedback from that ourselves and improve our services. Also in terms of accessibility, the Senator asked if people can telephone and come into the office, people can even send us voice notes, especially for people who might have a visual impairment methods such as that might suit them better.