Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)

I highlight a serious contradiction at the heart of the immigration and passport system, which raises serious concerns for national security, consistency and public trust. I will start with the Irish passport system. Every Irish citizen goes through a rigorous process to get a passport. Parents applying for their child's first passport must submit the long-form birth certificate, photographic identification and proof of address, all of which must be signed off on by An Garda Síochána. It takes weeks, sometimes months, for the processing of that standard, which is strict, as it should be, to be completed.

Let us look now at what is happening under another arm of the State. People who enter Ireland with no identification at all - no passport, birth certificate or official documents - are being allowed to apply for asylum and, later, in some cases, Irish citizenship. In certain circumstances, where they cannot provide identification, they are allowed to submit a sworn affidavit instead, that is, a legal document that simply declares who they are.

Once that affidavit is accepted and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade grants asylum, an application for a naturalisation certificate is accepted without question and without issue, following which a passport may be issued with no further checks and balances or questions. This raises a serious issue. One arm of the State is now applying rigorous verification standards while another is accepting unverified personal claims in the form of sworn statements when it has no way to confirm the truth. Even more worrying is that the replies I received to parliamentary questions I put to both the Department of foreign affairs and the Department of justice confirm that we do not track or count the many people who are granted citizenship or passports in this way. The State is simply not counting them.

I will put this number in perspective for the Minister. Some 775,000 passports were issued in the period from January 2024 to August 2024. It is anticipated that the number will be 1 million by the end of this year. Some 56,000 of those applications came from the county of Cork, where my own constituency is located. Of course, the vast majority of these applications are legitimate. Should we take it that all of those applications were subject to scrutiny and full verification?

This is not about compassion; it is about consistency, national security and waking up to the fact that naivety or laxity can be weaponised against us. Does the Minister accept that there is a gap and serious weaknesses in the standards of the passport and naturalisation process? Will he confirm that every single applicant for asylum or protection is being fingerprinted and identified as they come into this country?

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