Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. We can deal with the semantics of whether the turnaround time is ten, 15 or 16 days but, unfortunately, the reality is that it is not working for those who are in the situation I outlined. I am not criticising staff in that regard. Nobody, including the Department, should not be allowed push any of the days outward and if there are delays beyond 15 or 16 days, people should be entitled to a refund of the passport express charge. Equally, for every day subsequent to that, the Department should be penalised by a certain amount of money based on the deadline set.

People are losing out on flights to go on holiday, to which I alluded earlier. It is not the Department's fault. It can be their own fault because of delays in making the application and it is appropriate that we highlight them at this stage.

I want to make some comments I was asked to make on the issue. As of today, the appointment for first-time applications in Mount Street is taking four weeks to process. In other words, it will take until 13 June for somebody who makes an application today. We are getting into the holiday time and that needs to be highlighted again, as the Minister said.

Representations to the Minister's office are receiving, by and large, generic responses. Should there not be a contact line for the public and even for public representatives in terms of getting greater access to deal with the issue? Why are alerts only sent out when the three weeks expire, for example, if the photograph is unsuitable? Surely those could be checked separately at an early stage.

The new online service for renewals or lost passports is accepting applications and then after one or two days, a request is made for new photographs.

It is very important that we highlight what the Minister said on the issue of messaging people when their passports are close to being out of date, which is something I did not know until now. Also, modern technology should be able to highlight the expiry date on the passport. It is very visual when one opens it and it would be a strong reminder to the person that it is time to have the passport renewed.

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