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

An awful lot of people were accommodated at the last minute as well. I know, because we have been working night and day trying to deal with emergency passports for people throughout the summer. For some of the summer months, we issued up to 100,000 passports per month. The people who do not get resolved through the system go to Deputies' offices and, therefore, many Deputies hear about lots of problems and do not see the benefits of a system that is getting back up on its feet with extra resources and new systems in place to be more efficient. However, I accept that there is work to do. I do not want to pretend that all the problems with the Passport Office have been solved. They have not been. We also need to focus as a priority on getting foreign birth registries working as they should be.

Passport applications take time. We cannot move in a direction of essentially giving a message to the public that everyone can get a passport at the last minute if he or she does not renew earlier.

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