Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for his indulgence on my own behalf and on behalf of Deputy Michael D. Higgins. I thank also the staff who have put so much work into this legislation. From time to time it must be awful to hear the Opposition try to pick holes and find fault with legislation that has been worked on for a considerable time but we appreciate that and understand things have to be done properly. Our job is to ensure there are no flaws in the legislation.

We have had a full Passport Office in Cork for a number of years, which is an incredible resource. It has opened late at night and on Sundays in emergency cases. All of us have had people knocking on our doors who have either lost a passport and did not discover it until two hours before they were due to leave for the airport. The Passport Office staff are the most obliging group of people I have come across in many years. I thank them for their service and the manner in which they carry out their functions. Getting a passport for the first time is quite daunting but the staff do not make it seem like that. Nobody has a bad word to say about them.

I thank the Minister of State, for his indulgence, and his staff and all who work on the issuing and regulating of passports.

See this speech in context