Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will take this opportunity to thank the Minister's office and those in the passport service whom we manage to get through to on occasion for their empathy and hard work in expediting some of the cases we have raised with them. We all deal with such cases. Similar to many jobs around the country, I guarantee the House that, if someone were to walk into any constituency office in the State, one of the phones there would be set to autodial the Passport Office, such is the level of chaos.

As my colleague mentioned, it should have been predicted that this would happen, albeit perhaps not that it would reach this extent. However, it has reached this extent because of delays upon delays. Previously, I came up with practical approaches and mentioned them, for example, a reminder to people via email that their passports were about to go out of date. This idea might not have dealt with the current chaos, given that some of it is related to Covid and people's passports going out of date, but when someone is booking a flight, there is no reminder that he or she should check his or her passport. That would be a simple change. The State has a responsibility. Passports do not come cheap. People can apply online now, so they provide their email addresses. In nine and a half years' time, a message could go to that email address. This might not catch everyone, but it would catch some.

There are cases of signatures given in Garda stations up and down the country not being recorded, which leads to chaos and the mother or father running around trying to get things in order. I have dealt with cases from abroad. For example, there are people in England who are willing to travel all the way back to Ireland to collect passports that are not coming. They applied in January and the wedding they are going to in France will be in June, but they were told in May that they did not supply enough documentation. This is crazy. There needs to be a quicker, nearly instantaneous assessment of the documentation when it arrives. An elderly man in my constituency applied for a renewal in February and booked a flight for a major operation in Spain, but he had still not received his passport in May. That is crazy.

I appeal to the Minister of State to put more resources into the service and to ensure that booking sites and the like carry reminders for people who are booking flights or holidays abroad.

See this speech in context