Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being with us. I ordinarily begin statements by noting my appreciation for the opportunity to contribute to such a debate but, to be honest, I have absolutely no interest in contributing to this debate. I am utterly exasperated with the situation with the Passport Office. I do not speak alone. I am sure every single Member of this House, the other House, the vast majority of representatives in Northern Ireland, the Minister, the Passport Office and many members of An Garda Síochána around the country are sick of dealing with a system that is broken. By the time the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been contacting our offices for months get in touch, they are utterly exasperated. They are understandably stressed, frustrated, upset and at their wits' end. They are coming as a last resort, oftentimes through a friend or colleague or an MLA in Belfast, to their local representative hoping desperately to secure a passport not for the stated emergency reasons but for very important personal reasons. Many people are seeking the sheer fulfilment of a basic right as an Irish citizen, that is, the right to one's passport and identity and the right to travel.

I welcome the comments and genuine good intentions from the Minister of State but good intentions simply are not enough at this stage. We are talking about additional resources and recruitment. Are those additional resources going to lead to actual change anytime soon? Will there be change this year? Rather than leaving people on the phone for 100 rings, will they only have to put up with 50 rings? That is still not great. Representatives are not necessarily facing those waiting times. Those waiting times are for people who are sitting up through the night often mistakenly pressing the refresh button on an online tracking scheme because they are desperate to get that passport. They do not want to turn around to their seven-year-old child and tell them they cannot go on the trip of a lifetime that was promised because the family could not get passports, despite the fact the forms were put in 24 weeks ago. Perhaps the family made an error but it was not identified until ten days before the flight. It is all adding to a system about which we must be honest.

A recruitment campaign sounds great but, as Deputy Devlin said, why can we not have a proper redeployment? The Department of Foreign Affairs has some of the best public and civil servants this State can possibly produce. They are scattered around the world and doing amazing work that some of us do not see and we hope we will never see. They are involved with consular assistance, political influence, economic development and much more. They are the best and the brightest. The best and the brightest need to be fully deployed to fix a system that is becoming absolutely chaotic. I do not say that only because we, as public representatives, are getting it in the neck every day. I say it because the system simply is not working. There is no comparable state around the world that is encountering these levels of difficulty. The excuse of the difficulties presented by the pandemic does not cut it. The other 27 EU member states, the UK and comparable countries around the world are not suffering the same problems we are. We talk about issues such as inflation and the cost of living and say it is a global phenomenon and outline its impacts. This is a problem that is acutely specific to Ireland. The good intentions are welcome. However, if we look back to couple of years ago, before the pandemic, there was efficiency in the online renewal system and the passport express service. Our passport service was working excellently.

I have no interest in coming back to the Chamber before or after the summer recess and making the same single transferable speech about the hundreds of people who are contacting my office when, ultimately, they expect and want delivery to have happened months ago. All of us in the House are compelled to work with the Government to ensure that is done as soon as is humanly possible or faster.

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