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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 11, 14 and 17 together.

Passport service operations have been severely disrupted by Covid-19, as were many Government services. Notwithstanding this, the passport service has issued more than half a million passports to date in 2021 and 45% of simple adult renewals issue within one business week. Current passport processing times are ten working days for simple adult online renewals, 15 working days for complex or child online renewals, 40 working days for first-time applicants on passport online, and eight weeks for the an An Post mail-in service

The aforementioned passport processing times are based on current average application turnaround times and relate to passport applications submitted to the Passport Office with required supporting documentation. When passport applicants do not provided all of the requisite documentation to the passport service, it takes much longer to process the application and issue a passport. Currently, there are 108,000 passport applications on hand at the Passport Office. Of the online applications on hand, 34,000 or 35% of applications, are incomplete and the onus is on the applicant to submit the required documents to the service. The passport service contacts applicants who have not submitted the requisite documentation.

However, the passport service must wait in those 34,000 cases until the applicants submit the outstanding documentation that is required. While it makes every effort to contact applicants in such circumstances, its experience is that many applicants take weeks and sometimes months to send in the necessary documents. The passport service is attaching particular priority to the nearly 7% of online applications that have not been issued on or before the estimated issue date indicated to the applicant. Intensive work is under way to eliminate this problem and these delays are regretted very much by the service.

I will respond directly to all four of the Deputy's questions to make sure I get to them all. I have answered the question on the timelines. The requests for further information are predominantly about ensuring we combat against fraud, because fraudulent applications to the Passport Office happen all the time and we need to isolate and deal with them. That is why paperwork and its accuracy are important.

As many people did not travel and therefore did not look at their passports for 18 months, we anticipate there will be a much higher demand than normal for passports next year. It could be somewhere between 1.3 million and 1.7 million passport applications. That is why we are effectively doubling the numbers in the Passport Office and working with the Office of Public Works, OPW, to increase significantly the space within it.

Why did we start off with a cap on Oireachtas Members of no more than five per week? The reason is we wanted this to be a service specifically for emergency passports, not a general call line for Oireachtas Members for all passport applications. We wanted to make sure we could fast-track emergency passports quickly for Oireachtas Members and felt it was unlikely they would have to deal with more than five emergency passports per week. We got very negative feedback on that and have increased that number to 15. The whole point is we want normal passport applications to go through the normal processes. However, if there is an emergency, rather than having to look for the Minister or his office to solve it, we wanted to put what is in effect a call centre in place that could solve emergency cases quickly for Oireachtas Members. That was the thinking behind putting a cap on it.

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