Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will start where Deputy Conway-Walsh concluded. If I am correct, 90% of applicants are applying online now, which is the right approach to take and is what we always encourage constituents to do, but it does not mean that there are no problems. There are problems with the online process, as we have all experienced, especially in recent months. I will go into that in more detail.

There is no way to describe this other than to call it an utter mess. Deputies are referencing experiences from our constituency offices and from interactions with those who elected us to be here. We are doing this to illustrate a wider point about the dysfunctionality of the system. Citizens across the country are entitled to expect better from a public service. I hope the Minister of State will agree that it is unlike me to be critical of the public service and the way in which some sectors of it are managed and respond. He has set out the challenges as well as the plans for investment in the passport service, but we cannot say with any confidence that the service is operating at its best. It pains me to say this as somebody who is a supporter of public service, public servants and the public service more generally. This criticism is not directed against any individual in the passport service. I know that its staff are under severe pressure. They have, by and large, been helpful. That is, when we can get through and reach the right person. One of the problems when a Deputy or constituent contacts the Passport Office is that we often get conflicting information from different members of staff. Consistency of messaging needs to be examined in terms of the requirements that people are being asked to fulfil.

I want to offer some examples. I am glad we are having a debate. It was the Labour Party leader, Deputy Bacik, who last week called for this debate because it is important we debate what is an issue of primary importance in terms of public policy and the service the State provides to citizens and taxpayers.

The Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, referenced issues in regard to the verification of parent or guardian consent forms, which is a common problem. The Minister of State is very familiar with the area I represent; he is from that area and he has represented a section of it in the past. We have had many problems, like Deputies in my own party and others, in regard to the verification process at part-time Garda stations. The Minister of State knows there is a part-time Garda station at the southern end of my constituency at Laytown, a station he is very familiar with. We know there is a very high density and a high number of young families in that area who will be applying for first-time passports for children. We know that in a situation where there is a part-time Garda station and gardaí are not there to verify information when the Passport Office rings to check, the phone call is transferred to Ashbourne but the garda in Ashbourne does not know the individual constituent and may never have heard of the other garda involved.

This goes to the heart of the problem. We have a Victorian system where the verification details, the details of the passport application, the parent's identity and so on are essentially held in a ledger. As a country that prides itself on being a world leader in terms of the development of tech and IT systems, our public services should be adopting a best-in-class system to ensure we move away from the paper and pen to an online verification system that is safe. We can do that. It is achievable and other elements of the public service can do this very well. We need to ensure the information is recorded properly and then submitted to the Passport Office as efficaciously as possible and in a way that guarantees the integrity of the system. I accept that verification and integrity are critical.

I got a response from the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and a response from the Minister, Deputy McEntee, in regard to a request for the development of a modernised system. I was told that it simply is not going to happen and they referred to the fact there is only a small number of cases where the passport service has difficulty contacting the Garda station in order to verify the garda’s signature. That has not been my experience. I accept that the passport service makes efforts to contact relevant members of the Garda but it is not always possible. It should not be beyond us, with the skills we have in this country, to be able to develop a system that can deal with that, a modernised system to move away from the Victorian system that we have at present. That would make a very big impact on the efficiency of the system.

There are situations where it seems the paperwork is just not checked when it arrives or when it is submitted online. We were dealing this morning with a case in south County Louth where, four to five weeks after the original application, there has been a request for additional information, although that request could have been made four or five weeks ago. Is it the case or, more to the point, is it not the case that there is a group of people in the Passport Office who are going through and scrutinising the information? It would make their job easier in the long run and make the system work much more efficiently if they could weed out those problems at the start. We have been told it takes eight weeks for first-time applications and sometimes the clock has to start ticking again, or at least the system is not moving as efficiently as it might because of the delay. The idea that people wait for five weeks and there is no word, and when they check where their application is in the process, they find there is a bit of outstanding information or the Passport Office is not satisfied with the information received and is not then able to process it. That is bizarre in this day and age.

There simply has to be a better way to deal with this. I look forward to the Minister of State's response and to some new proposals emerging from the Department of Foreign Affairs as to how we can make this process and system much more user-friendly.

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