Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)

I appreciate the answer. What surprises me is the figure given of 17% of passports when, just in the past couple of weeks, I have had at least four or five people come to me. I have listened to a couple of other Deputies raising this issue as well, one from the Minister of State's own party during, I think, Questions on Policy or Legislation. It most definitely is an issue, but not with the Passport Office, because it does its due diligence and I understand that. Whenever people call the office about a passport, I hope it is not a first passport. I always know that if it is, it will be very difficult to try to resolve. Unfortunately, people sometimes do not understand until it is explained to them the importance of ensuring the veracity of the applicant and making sure this is real. Once a person gets their first passport, it then naturally follows on, so they have to get that piece right. I entirely agree that all of the checks and balances need to happen so that we ensure, as the Minister of State has said, that the Irish passport remains the number one.

The Minister of State talking about the Irish passport being number one reminds me of something. About ten or 12 years ago, agents of Mossad, the Israeli security service were caught with Irish passports. This relates to the previous debate we had in relation to that country. There is something we have to look at and we have to ensure that the system works. It is a stressful time for people and we have to try to make it as easy as we possibly can for them, the Passport Office and the Garda. We have to make sure there is not a waste of time or energy. We have to try to get it digitised in some way so that the checks can be done much more quickly and more easily and we do not have the situation where, unfortunately, people like this are left struggling, ringing our offices trying to get it sorted.

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