Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. This is a significant issue coming through my constituency office as well as his. I presume all Deputies have the same experience. The situation with renewals is actually now pretty good. Renewals are happening quite fast. There are significant delays, however, with new passports and passports for children, particularly foreign-born children. Some of that is down to the work that has to be done before the passport can be approved. What has happened in simple terms is there has been a huge surge in passport applications and passport renewals. The staff of the Passport Office are working very hard. There are more of them than there used to be. There has been a big increase in staff. We are actually now producing more passports every week than ever was the case before but the pent-up demand or snap-back demand, if one likes, from the pandemic has put us in a difficult position in terms of both passports and work permits. We are putting lots of extra staff into those areas and we will get over the backlog at some point.

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