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

First, of course, I recognise there has been a lot of disruption in the context of people trying to access passports. I have spent a great deal of my summer dealing with many of the Deputies in this House, trying to get passports resolved for many of their offices and for their constituents. I have specifically put a team in place around me in the office to try to ensure that happens as efficiently as possible. It is not always possible to solve that. If somebody comes to me and they are looking for a child's passport and they need it in 48 hours, we cannot do it. However, if someone is travelling at short notice and we can resolve the issue, we have been trying to do that for people.

We also have to recognise this is not just about getting more staff. If it was, we would have solved it. The nature of the passport operation is that staff need to be on site in the Passport Office to be able to deliver a safe service. We have a secure network within the Passport Office. We cannot simply take space in a warehouse somewhere else and issue passports separately.

We have taken on extra staff. The reason we could not take on more extra staff was not because we could not access more people. It was because we did not physically have the space in the secure environment of the Passport Office to be able to do the job that is necessary.

By the way, the Government did make a decision in May that the passport service was an essential service which, of course, was part of me getting more staff back into the Passport Office while managing the necessary Covid restrictions as well.

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