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

I thank Deputies for their co-operation on passports. I know the issue has put a lot of pressure on the constituency offices of all parties. A lot of applications from Northern Ireland come through the offices of Sinn Féin Deputies, if there is a problem. Likewise, there is a perception among the public that if they contact the constituency office of a Government party member, perhaps they are likely to get to the Minister faster or whatever. There is a lot of pressure on political offices in regard to passports.

The cases are very stressful. When someone is crying on the phone and saying he or she will miss a holiday for which he or she has been waiting for two years and has taken out a loan from the credit union or whatever to fund a holiday, it is a big deal to try to solve the problem. Rarely, but sometimes, it is not possible to solve the issue on time. Most of the time, from the feedback I have received, the Oireachtas line provides a good service. Urgent cases often come to my office, and nine times out of ten we get a response that is appropriate and reasonable.

People have responded in a way that is helpful to me and have made suggestions in terms of how we can improve things. There are frustrations at times but, by and large, people have recognised that we have extraordinary demand this year and are trying to deal with it by putting a lot more people into the system. Staffing levels and infrastructure have expanded dramatically in the space of nine or ten months to try to deal with the demand. I am glad to say that we have now reached the peak and the number of applications is starting to fall quite dramatically. The second half of the year will be a lot easier, for obvious reasons, because a lot of people needed to get passports before the holiday season starts.

On Deputy Aindrias Moynihan's question on a Cork printer, one of the first questions I asked when I started visiting passport offices was why we did not have a printer in Cork as well as Dublin to try to have a geographical spread and so on. The answer I received is that the pace of printing we can deliver through the current printers we have is not the problem. The proof of that is that the current number of applications is between 20% and 30% higher than the previous highest year, and the printers have still delivered.

The passports that are stuck in the system are stuck not because the printers cannot print fast enough, but because there are other problems or delays, something has gone missing, someone has not been able to answer the phone to respond to a query or whatever. That is not to say we will never have a printer in Cork. We have given consideration to a move to a new passport office in Cork. The current office facilities are not big enough and are not at the standard they need to be in terms of the staff numbers. We are in the very early process of looking at a relocation and providing a bigger, and perhaps more modern, building for the Passport Service in Cork, something I want to continue to pursue. We will of course keep printing capacity and where those printers are located under review. I am not in a position to say that we will move ahead with a printer in Cork at this stage.

We are trying to focus on the pressure points, namely, turnaround times and facilitating a new software system that can make online applications more efficient and flexible than they are today, while obviously maintaining safety and security to make sure that we guard against fraud and a range of other things, in particular in respect of children. Sometimes people scoff when I say there are security issues, but there are. Every week or so, there are cases of people trying to get passports inappropriately, using fraudulent information and so on. We have robust systems to deal with that but it sometimes delays the process. Security is really important.

I will follow up on the question on why the system accepts a photograph that is not valid. That is a fair question and I will get a proper answer to it and try to come back to the Deputy. The system should be able to differentiate between what is and is not valid at the outset, which would save an awful lot of strife later on.

On the question raised by Deputy Gould and others on the relationship between An Garda Síochána and Garda stations when a verification check is required, it is an essential part of ensuring there is no fraud and so on in the system. We now have new memorandum of understanding between the Passport Service and An Garda Síochána. It was agreed over the past number of weeks to have a system that no longer relies on the right garda being in a station and able to pick up the phone to give an answer that is needed to the Passport Service. What had been happening was that the Passport Service would try to call a Garda station on three separate occasions. If, after three efforts to do so, it did not get through to the right person or the Garda station, the process had to start all over again. That was not a good system. The Garda and we have accepted that, and we have a new system in place, which means the issue will be addressed. We will not hear about cases of a brother, but not a sister, getting a passport or vice versabecause the Passport Service did not get through to the right garda in a Garda station at the time the call was made. That problem will be solved.

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