Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Richmond and Carroll MacNeill for raising what is an important issue which is being raised with Deputies in constituency offices the length and breadth of the country. It has happened for several reasons, as the Deputies outlined. I am pleased to report that the Passport Service continues to provide a high quality, essential service in line with the Government's public health guidance outlined in our national framework on living with Covid-19.

At the outset, I express the apologies of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, who has asked me to stand in for him. However, I had a good conversation with the Minister on this issue today to get the most up-to-date information regarding the situation for the Deputies regarding passport services. The Passport Service has been operational in respect of five key essential fronts during the pandemic. These have included providing passports for emergency and urgent cases. More than 40,000 passports have been issued this year, including approximately 3,000 in response to urgent requests from our citizens at home and abroad. Customer service information has also been provided to more than 40,000 citizens via our web chat service, as well as consular services to our citizens overseas through our consular helpline. The staff of the Passport Office have also been assisting in contact tracing for the HSE as part of the wider national response to Covid-19. They have also been assisting the Department Social Protection to facilitate the processing of essential Covid-19-related benefits.

I emphasise to the House that throughout the pandemic the Passport Service has been open to serving citizens in its highly professional manner. The service is fully committed to assisting citizens who have been or are required to travel due to the death or serious illness of a family member and or who give evidence of a reasonable cause for travel, as defined in the recent amendment to the Health Act 1947, which came into effect on 1 February. The Passport Office is continuing to process renewals and first-time applications where the citizen is only entitled to Irish citizenship or legally required to hold a passport for residency purposes. The urgent service also assists citizens who are resident abroad who require a valid passport for visa purposes or citizens who require a renewal for work purposes.

On behalf of the Government, I commend the staff of the Passport Office for their dedication to their mission of providing a front-line public service during this pandemic and also contributing to the national response in these unprecedented times. I take great pleasure in commending the Passport Office for that work and for its contribution to the national response, which has tested our communities overseas and our people here also.

Were it not for the current pandemic, the Passport Office would be fully operational and the award-winning service would be operating at full throttle. Several organisational adaptations have already been made which have increased efficiency and output, while maintaining the necessary health and safety protocols. This is already making a difference. The Passport Service has a plan in place which will become operational in the near future as restrictions are eased and which will quickly clear the backlog of passport applications.

In the meantime, urgent passport applications will continue to be dealt with expeditiously and the webchat service is available to answer queries about specific circumstances.

On the specific points raised by Deputy Richmond about people who need a passport for reasons other than travel, it is a real issue, and I know that it has been raised with Deputy Richmond in his constituency on a number of occasions. It is one that we are mindful of and it is why we want to get the service back up and running as quickly as possible to make sure we get the full amount back to everybody else.

That leads on to the point raised by Deputy Carroll MacNeill in respect of the plan for clearing the backlog. I can assure the Deputy that the passport service expects that most applications received this year will come from adult renewals and we anticipate to return to a five-day turnaround for these applications within six to eight weeks of reopening. The Central Statistics Office survey from 1 March indicated that 15% of people expect to take an overseas holiday in 2021. In addition, while it is projected that most adults will have received their first dose of vaccine by the end of June, the timeline for children is longer, and we expect that this will impact on the number of families travelling overseas this summer. Therefore, the number of applications received for children are expected to remain low.

As articulated by the two Deputies, there are many reasons people need a passport. We are acutely aware of that. We want to get the service back up and running. We are dealing with emergency cases as it is and we will get back to full service quickly.

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