Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State has heard over and over, the Passport Office is in chaos. The service is at breaking point. One of the most frustrating things is that we are now into peak summer holiday season. This has gone on for a year and the frustration is primarily about the fact that nothing was done up until this point. We are now here at the eleventh hour trying to put additional resources in place to cater for these numbers. All of this was foreseeable. There had been ample time up until now, the end of May, to do things. The waiting list for first-time passports is growing and is absolutely huge. One family were asked to provide a birth certificate for their child three times because the Passport Office claimed, wrongly, that they had sent photocopies. That is how frustrating it is for people.

Concerns have been raised with me that the equipment in the Passport Office is having trouble reading the watermarks on some official documents. I do not know whether that is accurate so maybe the Minister of State can clarify. I have been told by somebody who deals with the issuing of those official documents that is the case.

There are several other operational issues that could easily have been addressed some time back and which are compounding the delays. For example, when the office requests additional information and that information is given over, that applicant is treated as a brand new one and is put back at the end of the queue, despite how long it might have been since their original application. Surely that could be addressed immediately, given that it was not pre-empted-----

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