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

I thank the Deputy for giving me an opportunity to outline that foreign birth registration is open again. It has always been open for emergency cases but it has reopened again for mainstream applications. I am pleased to inform him that as of Monday, 15 November, the processing of foreign birth registration, FBR, has resumed and will be gradually scaled up in line with the recruitment of additional resources. Foreign birth registration applications are citizenship applications and, as in all jurisdictions, involves a complex and lengthy process.

My Department is fully committed to allocating additional resources over the coming period to assist with the processing of the high volume of new applications anticipated and the 32,000 applications currently on hand. This will be a major challenge, but one that we are committed to achieving. The FBR teams have worked since the pandemic began to consider all urgent requests to expedite applications on a case-by-case basis, for example applications from expectant parents, or stateless persons. More than 5,000 emergency applications have been processed in 2021.

My Department is determined to ensure that the Passport Service is sufficiently resourced to respond to current and anticipated unprecedented demand for passports and FBRs next year. My Department is actively working with the Public Appointments Service to recruit and assign additional permanent and temporary staff in the coming weeks. By the end of January 2022, I am advised that this recruitment drive will bring total staff numbers to 920, which is the highest staffing level ever and effectively double the number of staff in the Passport Service. The starting point was half that.

I want to express appreciation for the work of the FBR teams in assisting in the provision of urgent passport and contact tracing services during the pandemic. So far this year, they have operated both an urgent FBR service and assisted in the delivery of more than 500,000 passports as part of our expanded essential passport service operation.

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