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

To clarify, the essential service was never stopped. Foreign birth registration for essential cases was always maintained. Of course there is frustration for the 32,000 cases on hand and parents, primarily, will want Irish passports for their children who are entitled to them. However, we had to make a judgment to prioritise how we used staff for essential services during the pandemic and we did that. We now have a more normal system back up and running since Monday. We are going to need more human resources to get on top of the number of cases on hand and we are recruiting as we speak. We are effectively going to double the numbers in the Passport Office between now and the start of February. We will get on top of the cases on hand as well as the significant number of applications we expect next year. We think we could have between 1.3 million and 1.7 million passport applications next year, which is going to be a significant demand on the system.

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