Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are changing our software system. It will not be concluded until next year but, when we do that, we will have more options, such as potentially working with networks such as the An Post network or social welfare offices, for example. That would broaden the service geographically in terms of where people can apply for passports and so on. The fact is that passports are printed in Dublin. When I was Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, people told me that if we moved the whole farm payments online, many farmers would be unable to deal with that because they do not have broadband connections and all the rest of it. For many years now, all farmers have successfully been applying for their payments online. It is the only way in which one can do so. We need to get to a point where everybody applying for a passport does so online, but we have to make sure there are facilities available for those who do not have connections in their homes to be able to do that in the locality and so on. The online system is so much more efficient. It is much easier for me to intervene or for the Oireachtas call centre to do so in important cases if there is an online file on which one can intervene. Paper-based applications are much more complex to deal with because they involve physical piles of paper through which one has to search for a certain application. That is difficult when one is dealing with thousands of applications every day. This is a system that is evolving and changing. It has experienced extraordinary demand this year and, by and large, we have dealt with that, with some obvious exceptions where things have gone wrong. It is improving by the week. To give people a bit of good news, the demand for passports will be down by approximately one third in June, which will give the system a chance to catch its breath.

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