Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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5. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if his attention has been drawn to a series of issues (details supplied) in relation to delays in the issuing of first-time and renewal passports; and if the parent consent form will be simplified. [4164/22]

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I ask whether the attention of the Minister has been drawn to a series of issues in regard to the delays in the issuing of first-time and renewal passports, and if the parent consent form needs to be simplified. One of the biggest issues is that over 40% of children's passports are sent back as not being complete applications.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. I suspect there will be a lot of talk around passports in the weeks ahead as more and more people choose to travel again, and many, of course, have not even thought about travel for the last number of years. We expect a significant increase in passport applications. There are questions coming up that will allow me to address what we are doing in response, which is a dramatic increase in staff numbers in the Passport Office.

Passport Service operations were severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021, as were many Government services. Despite necessary public health restrictions, the Passport Service maintained operations, with staff working onsite throughout the pandemic.

The Passport Service has put in place several measures to meet the demand anticipated this year including the following. First, there is the assignment of additional permanent and temporary officers on a continuous basis to the Passport Office. My Department has conducted a major recruitment drive in recent months and I expect that, by the end of January, staffing numbers will be at approximately 777, which is a 70% increase on June of last year. Additional staff will continue to be assigned to the Passport Office throughout February and March. The new Passport Office in Swords is now operational and can accommodate 140 staff. Second, the Passport Service is engaged in intensive training of staff to ensure they have adequate resources to process complex applications. Third, the Passport Service is continually looking at ways to improve processing times. A particular improvement that is currently being rolled out and will be of interest to the Deputy is a change to the document management process that reduces the turnaround time when additional documents need to be submitted by the applicant.

With regard to the simplification of the process, the Passport Service continually works to streamline the application process. Comprehensive information is available on all aspects of the application process on my Department’s website and the Passport Service continually reviews these instructions in order to make them more accessible. In addition, there are over 60 staff on the customer service team dedicated to answering applicants' questions by phone and webchat. This number will increase as additional staff are assigned.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I hear the reply but there are huge issues with people getting their passports on time, especially children's passports, both first-time applications and renewals. The current process still needs to be reviewed as I have been advised recently by the Minister's office that more than 40% of all children's passport applications are deemed to be incomplete. The problem is that the extra or missing information is not sought until too near the date when the application was supposed to be granted. That seems to be where the problem is. The applications should be looked at from the start, when they are submitted, and the information should be asked for then. There is something wrong. The children's application part needs to be streamlined. When we hear 40% of applications are not complete, there is something wrong.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Some 99% of online child renewal applications are issued within 15 working days, and it is important to say that.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I doubt that.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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However, on the issue raised by the Deputy, first-time applications take a lot longer and I urge parents of children who have never had a passport to apply now online if they are travelling this year.

We are, of course, looking to bring down the turnaround times for first-time applicants, as well as for renewals, and we are putting a lot of extra staff and resources into that. The Passport Service reports that approximately 40% of first-time child applications are incomplete. However, our records show that this is not due to issues with consent forms, which some people have raised a concern around. In fact, 77% of all incomplete child applications occur when parents have not submitted any documentation to the Passport Service. In these cases, parents apply online for their child's passport and can sometimes take weeks or even months to submit the required supporting documentation, such as a witness consent form, and the child's identity documents, such as their birth certificate. We will be putting more resources into this to try to improve delivery times.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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The Minister is right. As we are talking here today, there is a backlog of 113,000 applications. Can the Minister imagine that? Something needs to be changed in regard to the parent consent form because that is where most of the difficulty is, and the application is being sent back due to a lack of information or because there is something wrong with that parent consent form.

That needs to be streamlined or something needs to be done to change it in such a way that it will be more effective. One poor man applied to renew his passport before Christmas. His children bought him a ticket. He had not travelled for more than ten years. That is deemed to be a new application. I cannot understand why it should be. When he had a passport before, what is the difference between nine and 11 years? I ask the Minister to address that issue too.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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The Minister to respond.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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Why should it be treated as a new application because it has been 11 years?

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We are way over time.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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It would have been just a renewal if it had been nine years.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy would expect, the Passport Service is currently experiencing a high level of demand for first-time passports and renewals. We will probably do 100,000 this month. This year, we could end up doing 1.7 million passports. We have never reached 1 million before, even at the height of travel before Covid. That is the extent of the demand increase we are expecting. By the end of March, we will probably have 900 people working in the Passport Service, which is just under double what we had last summer. We are putting substantial resources into responding to this demand. To put it into context, out of a total of 113,000 applications currently with the Passport Service, 73,000 are for first-time applications. Some 32,000 of these are incomplete applications where the applicant has either not sent in any documentation after applying online or additional documentation has been requested. We need to make sure the application process works, that the turnaround times at the Department happen more efficiently and that people who are making applications fully understand what they need to do.