Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing this Private Notice Question. I also thank the Minister of State for his reply. I have a number of questions for him. Does he agree that the reason for this difficulty in the first instance is the Government's policy of pay cuts? Had it followed Fine Gael's advice and started enacting pay cuts above the €30,000 level, it would have been carrying out a far more equitable policy. The decision to reverse the pay cuts in respect of the higher paid added fuel to the fire.

Does he also agree there is an implicit right in the Constitution to travel? Thus, an individual has a right to transport, a right that the State should be in a position to honour. The European Convention on Human Rights, to which we are signatories, recognises the freedom of movement. This indicates that a State should be in a position to issue passports to its citizens. Does he agree that it is outrageous for the general public to be inconvenienced in such a manner? Members of the public are innocents in this matter. Some are queuing at the Passport Office and thousands more are waiting at home awaiting their passports.

This is not a question of someone hoping to go to the Costa del Sol for a holiday. It is a question of students going abroad on educational matters, people going abroad on personal appointments and business people travelling. They have all been inconvenienced. The general public cannot be held to ransom by one of the State's unions. It is inappropriate. This is not a go slow. Rather, it is a strike in everything but name.

Does the Minister of State also agree that the Passport Office has provided an excellent service to date? It is a credit to the advances made by sections of the public service in recent years. This work to rule has brought the office into disrepute, undeservedly so in some sense. The workers are being held to ransom by their union leaders.

At a committee today, certain issues were raised, including the extension of the valid period of passports as per section 9 of the Passports Act 2008 and the issuing of emergency travel documentation as per section 15 of that Act. It would appear both sections, due to security difficulties and international agreements with the aviation organisations, are not options.

Two options are available. First, the dispute could be ended. Will the Minister of State confirm whether approximately 50 temporary workers have been sanctioned to do the work and clear the backlog within a few weeks? Temporary workers are taken on every year during this peak period, but the CPSU has placed an embargo on their being taken on board. It has also placed an embargo on overtime. That a machine is out of commission is irrelevant to the time taken to process applications. The CPSU action is the only blockage. Are temporary staff available to come on board straight away and clear the backlog? Will the Minister of State join me in asking the union to call off the go slow, which has been of considerable inconvenience to the public? We have seen the difficulties it has caused people in recent days.

Second, we could outsource the service. If the State cannot guarantee through its public service that members of the public can travel freely by getting a passport, we should outsource the service. In 2008, a KPMG report suggested that the passport service should undertake a cost benefit analysis of producing passports in-house and outsourcing that production before the end of the useful life of the current APS hardware. The same report outlined how the Netherlands, UK and Denmark have outsourced their services, which have operated successfully since. Has this cost benefit analysis been conducted? Does the Minister of State agree that, if the dispute is not resolved, the facility should be outsourced? We are here to serve the public interest, not any sectoral interest.

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