Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will tell the Deputy what I see as wrong. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of passport applications across multiple platforms. The online application process has worked well and we are ahead of our turnaround target times. In many cases, the turnaround time for half of online applicants is five days rather than ten days plus postage. Problems occur when children are applying for a first-time passport and when passports have been lost and people need a replacement quickly. They make an application and follow that up with a phone call or an email but do not get an answer. We are trying to deal with tens of thousands of phone calls and emails each week. The pressure this places on staff at peak time coupled with significant increases in demand for passports across all platforms has resulted in delays. As a result, we have taken on an extra 220 temporary staff, which we take on every year in the build up to the peak season, but we have also redeployed approximately 30 experienced staff on a temporary basis to respond to people by phone and email more quickly. If people do not get responses by phone, they tend to work through Deputies' offices and so on and, therefore, we have had to put systems in place to deal politically with many applications, which is not the way to do this efficiently.

See this speech in context