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

Regarding well-earned holidays, the travel advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as of today is not to travel abroad, and I want to be very clear on that. Despite advertisements for flights to Italy, Spain and elsewhere that we hear on our radios, the travel advice today is that people should not be planning to go abroad. Those who go abroad, when they come back, will be asked to self-isolate for 14 days. That is the travel advice and those are the restrictions being applied unless and until the Government decides to change them on the back of public health advice and consultation with our colleagues, friends and partners across the European Union.

Of course we are keeping that under review. Having said that, under the five-stage opening-up period, there will be an opportunity to take well-earned breaks and holidays, we hope, in late June and in August, or before then if it is safe to speed up the pace of the opening-up period. If people want to travel abroad, and the advice allows it, later on in the summer or later in the year, we have to ensure they have passports.

The truth is that because there was little or no demand for passports during the Covid-19 period, we have allocated staff to other essential jobs across the public sector. This is now changing and the demand is increasing. If people want to get a fast turnaround time from next week on, they should apply online. Even if an applicant has applied by post in recent weeks or months and has received no response, assuming he wants to get a quick turnaround time, he should reapply online. We will talk applicants through that process and reimburse them the cost of the paper application. It is far easier for us to turn around passports quicker with online applications. I hope that is clear. We are trying to be helpful. Later on in the summer we will get to resuming a normal process of postal applications, but if an applicant wants a fast turnaround time he should pick up the telephone and talk to us. We will talk the applicant through how an online application works. It is straightforward and we can get a far faster turnaround time from next week onwards.

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