John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's reply and I want to acknowledge the sterling work being done by officials in the Department, under immense pressure, to deal with the conveyor belt of applications coming in. The Minister referred to 88,000 first-time applications this year, which is a pretty phenomenal figure. The fact that 400,000 passport applications have been made in the year to date when the total for the whole of last year was 650,000 is also highly significant.

I particularly welcome the fact that the Department is going to double the number of staff in the Passport Office. However, one figure stands out in that context. Staff numbers will be doubled in comparison to last year but based on the statistics the Minister has given, there will be three times the number of applications this year. I ask the Minister to deal with that.

The second issue I want to raise is the WebChat facility. I have a list, just from today-----

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