Dáil debates
Wednesday, 18 May 2022
Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate
Passport Services
9:42 am
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Gabhaim buíochas, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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If the Deputy could help us gain a minute or two, I would appreciate that.
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Gabh mo leithscéal?
Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We are finishing at 10 a.m. so I ask that the Deputy might help us gain a little time which I would appreciate.
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Déanfaidh mé mo dhícheall, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, just for you.
First, to welcome the Minister and I want to acknowledge the very dedicated team in the Passport Office which is producing on average 20,000 passports per week and the Minister of State’s updated figures may indicate even more than that.
I also wish to acknowledge the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, and his team. They work exceptionally hard to try to put in systems that work for citizens. Before I get into the substance of my motivation in raising this issue, in the past five working days I have had 30 phone calls and six emails on this subject. Overall, my constituency office has received approximately 250 to 260 queries about passport applications in the past few months. This is not just a matter in my constituency. The good citizens of Tyrone and Derry have also been in touch with me through their public representatives. I put that context on the record before turning to the substance motivating my request.
I am arguing for a passport office in the north west. I obviously use this as an opportunity to push for it to be located in Letterkenny because of its city status and previous gateway status. I ask that the new office be located somewhere in the north west. It would not be for online applications, because that is going to be the normal process for the renewal of passports and it is working well. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, about this issue. People living in Britain or in the North have the opportunity of going to Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Peterborough, Birmingham or Belfast if they wish to apply for a British passport. In this jurisdiction, the options are Dublin and Cork. or London or any of our other embassies round the world. Therefore, citizens living in the north west seeking an emergency passport appointment, perhaps for tomorrow morning, may find there are no emergency passport appointments available tomorrow morning in Dublin. The only option available then to somebody living in the north west is to go to London or Cork. If somebody in the north west is to go to an appointment that may be available tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. in Cork, that means there will be a need to travel to that city and to stay overnight. There is something distinctly wrong about this scenario.
I want to put on record today the idea of opening a passport office in the north west. It is worth pursuing because there is a massive gap here in respect of providing equal services to everybody on this island. The emergency passport application costs €150. People from Finglas, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow will find that €150 is still a lot of money, but that is all it will cost them and they may be able to travel by public transport or perhaps be able to nip into the passport office for a few minutes. For people living anywhere up in the north west, however, we are talking about them having to travel the night before and stay in hotel accommodation in the city. This travel will be undertaken on roads that are not motorways and from a region that does not have a train service. Therefore, a massive gap exists in this regard. The answer from the Minister of State will say everything is working well with respect to the online passport renewal service, which it is. Some of the turnaround times achieved are unbelievable. What I am looking for, however, is for the Department to keep an open mind on this issue. I will talk a bit more about the details later.
9:52 am
Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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The Passport Service is a unified service composed of three constituent offices located in Lower Mount Street in Dublin 2, in Balbriggan and on the South Mall in Cork. Passport applications from all citizens, whether at home or abroad, are distributed for processing across these three passport offices based on the type of application rather than on the place of residence of the applicant. The Passport Service provides a range of channels to Irish citizens wishing to apply for a passport. These include a postal application service, an online application service and an in-person, counter appointment facility in Dublin and Cork.
Some 90% of all passport applications, including first-time applications, are now being made online. The Passport Service is committed to continuing to offer a range of application channels, including a mail-in, paper-based service for citizens who are not eligible or do not wish to use online passport services. Passport Online is the priority channel for applications as there are many efficiencies built into the system for the applicant and the Passport Service. The Passport Online service can be accessed by all first-time applicants, including children and adults, in over 50 countries worldwide. All Irish citizens, including children, can use the online system to renew their passports from anywhere in the world. Passport Online offers Irish citizens the ability to apply online for their passport 24-7. It is a user-friendly, efficient service that consistently offers processing times up to four times faster than the paper-based passport renewal application system.
The paper-based, mail-in Passport Express service is available to citizens at almost 1,000 An Post post offices and at over 70 post office locations in Northern Ireland. With the availability of both Passport Online and the paper-based service, very few applicants are required to travel a significant distance to apply for their passports. In the relatively small number of cases where citizens need to travel urgently and do not have a valid passport, the passport offices in Dublin and Cork offer an urgent appointment service for passport renewal, with a one-day turnaround time. The Passport Service offices in Dublin and Cork have processed 5,000 urgent appointments to date in 2022. These urgent appointment applications represent less than 1% of the total number of applications received by the Passport Service since January 2022.
For applicants who have questions about their applications, the Passport Service customer service hub can be contacted by phone or by web chat. While I know it can be challenging to get through at busy times, the customer service hub has handled 95,000 queries to date this year. In April, customer service representatives handled an average of 1,000 queries daily. The Department has also recently updated its website, including the addition of a new Passport Service section where applicants can easily find out which documents are required for their type of application.
Overall, the current range of service options meets the needs of passport applicants and the service improvements, including those recently introduced and those planned, allow the Passport Service to provide this essential citizen service in an efficient and effective manner. While there are no plans to open additional passport offices, the Passport Service will continue to consider ways in which to enhance the customer experience for citizens. The Deputy has asked that an open mind be kept in this regard, and of course we will do so.
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. That last paragraph is important, because it emphasises that "the Passport Service will continue to consider ways in which to enhance the customer experience for citizens". I reiterate and re-emphasise that someone in the north west will have to travel the night before an appointment and pay substantial costs for hotel accommodation. Those people will be out a lot of money in that regard, in addition to the €150 cost of the emergency passport itself. I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, this morning before I came in. I really do hope a meeting with officials and the Minister will happen quickly.
Turning to some general points about the current system, communication is key. We need a better early warning system. I refer to situations where people might be applying for passports for their children in January or February, perhaps. This could be similar to the case of a gentleman who rang me yesterday. He has got back passports for three of his children, but he has not got any information on whether there is going to be a problem. The flights in question are on 6 June and the due date is 8 June. That man wishes to know if there is something he can be doing in this regard. Therefore, we need better communication. We need better messaging as well. I know the Department and the Passport Office are trying to get people to access the online system rather than the paper-based one. They are trying to get away from that latter approach, but we still advertise the availability of paper-based applications as "Passport Express". Using that label straightaway gives the message that the response will happen quickly, but that might not prove to be the case.
We talk about the peace dividend as well. Equally, we talk about the protocol and its benefits to citizens. Talk is talk, though, and action is action. People will have to start seeing more things happening on the ground. An example would be those people who have travelled down last week, this week and every week on the A5, which is still not a dual carriageway. If we are going to be saying to the citizens of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry, or even further afield into Fermanagh and Sligo and all these surrounding counties, that we are going to provide a service equal to the service that people in Kerry, Limerick, Cork or Dublin and its wider environs get, then they must see action on this dividend. Iarraim ar an Aire Stáit a shúile agus a intinn a choinneáil oscailte.
Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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The Deputy made several points. He suggested there should be a better early warning system if there are errors with a passport application and the date is not going to be met. I will communicate this point to the Passport Office. Deputy McHugh also pointed out that "Passport Express" might be the wrong name if the other method is in fact the express method and that perhaps we should examine this aspect. It was, however, the faster method of securing a passport when it was introduced, but we may look at the branding of that now, given we have the online system in place. There is clearly a difference. All of us in the House are very familiar with queries about passport applications, and especially since the onset of the pandemic. We have all done a great deal of that kind of work and a lot of representing our constituents in such cases. We understand, for example, that new passport applications take much longer than renewals. People have told me they have applied to renew their passport at lunchtime and then received it the next morning. They are delighted with that outcome. On the other hand, an application for a new passport can take a long time to deliver. The Deputy is especially emphasising the need for good communication and that we ensure that when an issue does occur that we let people know about it. We have clearly got a large cohort of new passport holders from Northern Ireland. We are distributing passports to them through post offices in the North.
We are getting many new citizens from both sides of the community, who are welcome. The system is under massive pressure because there were two years in which people did not renew their passports. That constitutes 20% of the population that did not renew their passports, meaning 1 million passports are required. That backlog is being worked through with a large number of people being hired.
10:02 am
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I used to be in the Minister of State's position and got in trouble all the time for giving my opinion, but what is the Minister of State's opinion on somebody from the north west having the same access?
Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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We are the Government for all citizens of Ireland and have to make sure the services we provide to the public are equitable and fair, no matter where one lives, in so far as possible.
Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Go raibh maith agaibh. The interactive session is over and we have kept to time. I thank Deputies for their co-operation.