Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to take this question from Deputy Donnelly and I appreciate the constructive manner that it is placed and hopefully I will be able to reply in an equally constructive manner. I will skip over some of the introductory remarks, which he will receive to his place shortly - because the Deputy knows himself the Passport Office is working extremely hard on delivering overall, with 440,000 passports issued so far this year alone.

More pertinent to the question the Deputy has raised, passport online was introduced in 2017 and since then, adults renewing their passports through the Passport Office are not required to submit a witnessed identity form. Online child renewal applications can be witnessed by members of many professions, including school teachers, doctors, elected representatives and gardaí. I dare say everyone in this House has witnessed at least one passport form in the past week.

Certain passport application forms for applicants resident in Ireland, however, are required to be witnessed by a member of An Garda Síochána. For the interest of the House, these applications are post passport, first-time adult online and first-time child online. The witnessing of these application forms is a vital element of the identity verification process as it provides initial assurance to the passport service that the person in the photograph is the same person presenting to submit the form.

With applications for a minor, which is particularly important, the witnessing of this form provides evidence guardians have given consent for a passport to be issued to the child. To protect the rights of parents or guardians and children, it is important that forms are correctly completed. As I mentioned previously, child online renewal applications can be witnessed by a range of professions; not just gardaí. When a garda does witness an application, it is the responsibility of the witnessing garda to ensure the signature is correctly recorded in their station logbook in order that when the passport service calls, the signature can be verified.

Only 17% of all applications require a Garda witness. In these cases, the passport service calls the relevant station to confirm the garda recorded the form in their logbook. The passport service is not required to directly speak to the witnessing garda. Passport service staff call the Garda station up to three times to verify the signature. Passport applications are checked by experienced entitlement officers who endeavour to maintain up-to-date records of the opening hours of Garda stations. Where the passport service cannot reach the Garda station after three attempts, the relevant superintendent’s office can be contacted to verify the details. If the passport service is unable to verify the witness after these steps have been taken, only then will a new witnessed form be requested from the applicant.

The passport service is continuously looking, however, at ways to make the application process easier for applicants, including the enhancement of digital services, and would therefore welcome the digitisation of the records maintained by An Garda Síochána when witnessing applications. Currently, there is a general update of passport service policies in the context of the ongoing programme of passport service reform. This reform programme focuses on the future of service delivery by implementing projects which enhance the customer experience while maintaining the integrity of the Irish passport.

Where viable, we will look at all potential options for modernising the facility but I cannot understate enough that officially, the Irish passport is the best ranked passport in the world. It is number one – not one of 100 – number one. There are a couple of things that go into that. First, it has access to various jurisdictions vis-à-vis travel and access to the European free market, which is great but really the main deciding feature is the veracity of the Irish passport. It is impossible to forge and that is specifically important when we talk about applications for children and protecting minors in that service.

While the system may seem a little onerous, it is there for good reason. That does not, however, preclude options for completely and continuously improving it as we saw from the original introduction of the online service in 2017. As I said, I am more than happy to work, particularly with Deputy Donnelly, on how we can improve this system.

See this speech in context