Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I concur with what has been said about the importance of information flow. I appreciate that this is a huge challenge. I accept that thousands of applications are being dealt with each week. This fast-moving process puts huge demands on staff and generates revenue. Many other parts of government do not draw in revenue as part of the services they provide. We need to up our game. It is good that the Irish passport is so popular in the North, in the South and with the diaspora. We welcome that. I was one of many people who thought after the Brexit referendum that there would be huge demand for Irish passports from people living in England, Scotland, Wales and the North of Ireland for a year or so, but that this would abate after the initial big bang. That has not happened, which shows that the demand for Irish passports will remain strong and that is the key message. We need to put in place a system to try to deal with that in the Cork and Dublin offices.

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