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

Regarding turnaround times, the processing time for first-time applications reduced from 40 days to 30 days this year, a 25% reduction in processing times. That is the position as of 19 April. A new system for managing additional documentation is also in place, because the Deputy asked for it in the House. The clock does not start again when people correct their paperwork when there is a problem. Instead, we now have a prioritised completion time within 15 working days when documents are corrected, rather than starting a long process again.

In terms of staffing and accommodation, 162 new staff have joined the passport service since 1 January. There have been over 300 new staff since June of last year. The passport service is currently running a recruitment competition for temporary clerical officers, TCOs. When completed, there will be more than 900 staff in the passport service, a doubling of where we were last summer when we had about 460 staff. A new site in Swords opened in November last year that accommodates 140 staff. Balbriggan's expansion work began in January 2022 and will accommodate another 175 staff.

We are pumping huge resources in terms of human resources and increased space into a service we know will be under significant pressure this year. We are expecting approximately 1.4 million passport applications. We thought the figure might be a little bit higher at the start of the year, but we think it will be around that now. As I said, in comparison to last summer we have doubled the number of people in passport offices. There are still issues and we are trying to address them, but we are delivering thousands of passports every single day. The vast majority of applications run smoothly and we compare very well to other countries but there are, every now and again, glitches with and delays in the system and when that happens a lot of people talk to Deputies' offices, which is what we have seen this week.

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