Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)

I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, coming in so late this evening. This issue relates to the increasing number of people contacting my office - and I have heard the same from other TDs in the past couple of weeks - regarding passport offices and not being able to get confirmation of signatures from Garda stations. It is causing huge distress for everyone involved in the process and creates an awful lot of work for everybody.

I will give the Minister of State examples from a couple of constituents. One said they got onto the Passport Office on 19 April 2024 to see what was happening and the following Tuesday they received an email to say it could not get through to the Garda station to confirm the consent forms because the phone was not answered. It was a family member of a friend who was a member of the Garda who got the forms signed. He said the station phone is manned 24-7 and was surprised to hear this. This was very unfair to the individual and through no fault of their own, they were put at the bottom of the pile and expected to wait a further 20 days.

Another constituent applied for a passport on 28 March 2025 and was advised by the Passport Office on 13 May there was an issue contacting the witness and the form would need to be signed again. On the same day, they went back to the Garda station in order for the consent form to be signed again and the Garda members were surprised to hear the office had difficulties making contact with them. We had an issue on both sides in this case. The last example relates to a ten-week-old baby whose passport was supposed to be issued last Friday but because the required witness was not contactable - and a landline number was provided - unfortunately, a whole new application was required.

We all know the difficulties when something happens with a passport and we all get these contacts every single week. It starts in February and March when people contact us and they say, "I am heading off in the next week or so and I am desperately trying to get hold of a passport". I commend the Passport Office because in fairness to it, it really does its best to try to get issues resolved as quickly as possible. If anybody listens to this, I urge them to please do not book anything before they have their passport in their hands.

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