Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for joining us today. I am very conscious that in a debate lasting over two hours, parliamentarians across the Chamber will be standing up and effectively saying the same thing. While that is frustrating for us, I imagine it is more frustrating for the thousands of people who have been left frustrated by this issue. We all accept the Passport Office's consistent lack of communication and accessibility to the public affects thousands of people throughout the country and has been a continuing source of exasperation. This is no reflection on the Passport Office staff in place at the moment. I know they are as exasperated as we all are. They do a great job. We just want more of them.

Passport representations have become the number one reason for people to contact my office. Constituents are desperate as they are unable to reach the Passport Office themselves. They cannot get through on the phone, through web chat or email for weeks if not months. Some families who have finally saved up enough money for a long-awaited trip away end up not receiving their child's passport that had been applied for months in advance. I heard of one case where half the family is going on holiday and the other half is not able to go. That is devastating for the morale of the family, especially coming out of a pandemic where people had to stay at home for so long. These are real issues.

There are new parents who desperately want to introduce their babies to grandparents who live abroad. There are family weddings and important work trips. The list goes on. We are at the coalface of hearing these stories. I do not want to highlight a single case or a constituent issue. The issue with the Passport Office is widespread and indiscriminate. We are not just talking about holidays, but I am very conscious how important these are. We are talking about people not being able to change their visa or access social welfare payments because they cannot get a passport for their child. In one case a woman who was breastfeeding contacted our office because she needed to travel for work purposes and was told she could not receive her child's passport and was not able to travel. This case was considered not to be an emergency. It is very difficult to have to convey that message back to a person.

Constituents contact their Deputies when they cannot get a public service they have paid for and to which they should be entitled as citizens of the country or people who live here. Deputies' offices are now becoming an extension of the Passport Office. As other parliamentarians have done, I pay homage to the staff in my office who are dealing with these issues almost hourly.

The news this week that the number of staff assigned to the urgent Oireachtas passport line was increasing from seven to 11 and the number of representations a Deputy can make on passport queries was increasing should not be welcomed because it is an admittance of failure of the system. Shockingly, 10,194 passport queries were raised by Deputies through the dedicated Oireachtas line for urgent passport queries between January and April of this year. We have a job to do in this Parliament, which involves scrutinising legislation and shadowing Departments. That alone indicates the lack of communication from the Passport Office to the public. The Ombudsman, Ger Deering, stated poor communication and lack of availability of somebody in the Passport Office to speak to the public are at the heart of the complaints his office receives.

I received a reply to a parliamentary question that stated approximately half of all applications currently with the Passport Office were first-time applications for children, and of those, 48% were considered to be incomplete. That would indicate a problem at the source. Parents do not want to delay the child's application. It is not their fault the system does not function correctly, but the issue is not being acknowledged by the Passport Office as a whole or by the Department. I hope our debating the matter today brings some degree of acknowledgement and, more importantly, a solution to the issue.

Deputy Catherine Murphy received a reply to a parliamentary question in which the Minister stated that, regarding incomplete first-time passport applications, the Passport Office makes every effort to contact applicants but its experience is that many applicants take weeks and sometimes months to send in the necessary documents. People are fastidious with these documents. When somebody is making a passport application, they take great care to ensure every line is filled out in detail. In every representation my office made, this has proven not to be the case, and I doubt it is the case for most Deputies making passport representations on behalf of their constituents. My experience is applicants are trying multiple times a day every day for weeks if not months to make contact with the Passport Office. It is essential we stop blaming applicants and acknowledge there is a genuine fault in the Passport Office as a whole.

Given the level of discussion and scrutiny generated yesterday, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the lunacy that came from no particular individual but from the Government itself in announcing the name change of Passport Express to Post Passport, as if that is something to be welcomed. It suggests that because the system does not work, we have changed the name of it. It is a complete joke that the name of Passport Express is causing the bulk of complaints and upset. Over 90% of all passport applications, including first-time applications, are now being made through the passport online service. Let us not make out that all these issues are because people are using the postal option for their passport applications nor that it is a name that gives people an idea they should be able to receive a modicum of communication and timeliness from the Passport Office once they are submitting a paper-based application. Is the Minister, the Department or the Government also looking to drop the word "urgent" from the urgent passport appointments given that the turnaround time to issue a four-day urgent passport is more than ten days at this point and no same-day appointments are available?

A number of constituents have also been scolded by the Passport Office that they should not have booked or made any future plans until they had passports in their hands rather than trust the information they were given by the service itself. Passports have been applied for months in advance and were well past their estimated arrival date, an arrival date that is presented on an online tracking service with rarely accurate timeframes and well past the stated turnaround times. The total expenditure in the passport reform programme over five years from 2016 to the end of 2021 was €13.4 million. I am not sure if that money has been worth it to date. The Minister and the Department need to stop blaming the public for the issues with the service and show some self-reflection and leadership. They need to just get the problem sorted.

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