Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, coming in so late this evening. This issue relates to the increasing number of people contacting my office - and I have heard the same from other TDs in the past couple of weeks - regarding passport offices and not being able to get confirmation of signatures from Garda stations. It is causing huge distress for everyone involved in the process and creates an awful lot of work for everybody.

I will give the Minister of State examples from a couple of constituents. One said they got onto the Passport Office on 19 April 2024 to see what was happening and the following Tuesday they received an email to say it could not get through to the Garda station to confirm the consent forms because the phone was not answered. It was a family member of a friend who was a member of the Garda who got the forms signed. He said the station phone is manned 24-7 and was surprised to hear this. This was very unfair to the individual and through no fault of their own, they were put at the bottom of the pile and expected to wait a further 20 days.

Another constituent applied for a passport on 28 March 2025 and was advised by the Passport Office on 13 May there was an issue contacting the witness and the form would need to be signed again. On the same day, they went back to the Garda station in order for the consent form to be signed again and the Garda members were surprised to hear the office had difficulties making contact with them. We had an issue on both sides in this case. The last example relates to a ten-week-old baby whose passport was supposed to be issued last Friday but because the required witness was not contactable - and a landline number was provided - unfortunately, a whole new application was required.

We all know the difficulties when something happens with a passport and we all get these contacts every single week. It starts in February and March when people contact us and they say, "I am heading off in the next week or so and I am desperately trying to get hold of a passport". I commend the Passport Office because in fairness to it, it really does its best to try to get issues resolved as quickly as possible. If anybody listens to this, I urge them to please do not book anything before they have their passport in their hands.

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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Preach.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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This goes on every single year but people have expectations because they look at the timelines from the Passport Office and think it is brilliant, they will have plenty of time within the timeline but unfortunately, once you get one simple issue like this, it throws the whole process into disarray and delays it for a very long time.

I am very interested to hear how we can resolve this - something around digitisation or modernising the process - because it seems a little archaic in this day and age to have the Passport Office ringing up a Garda station where a garda then goes to the big book and searches to see if the signature has been put in correctly. Sometimes there is a mistake where it can be put in incorrectly, which can cause problems.

I will leave it at that for the moment.

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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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.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I will reply on two issues. Where an Irish passport is tampered with, it tends not to be a forged or made-up document. It tends to be a stolen passport which someone uses to try to assume the identity of the owner and by trying to say they look like the person in the photo. That is how good the Irish passport is. The Deputy referred to an incident from ten or 12 years ago. I can assure him that things are greatly different now. Hence, the number one status, which has been achieved by 500 amazing staff in Balbriggan who I was very lucky to visit with Deputy Grace Boland a couple of weeks ago.

As a personal observation as much as anything else, and the Deputy and I have been in this House for the same amount of time so I do not pretend to be an oracle on this, if a person is contacting their TD about any issue, it is generally the last-chance saloon. People get pretty desperate and sometimes there have been failings in the systems and sometimes the person is that anomaly. As I mentioned, only 17% of applications require Garda witnessing. So far, 440,000 applications have been processed, so 17% of 440,000 equates to 23,000, last week alone. There will always be a few where the Garda station cannot be contacted three times or the superintendent cannot be contacted and then, eventually, it has to go back. If that is to happen to a person who is one of those who does everything the Deputy and I would say to them not to do, such as book travel, particularly for a child, without a valid passport, the first place the person will turn to, if not the parish priest, is probably their local TD, in search of divine or political intervention. That is not to take away from the stress and the fact this does not absolve us from our responsibility to constantly improve the customer-facing role of the Passport Office. It is exceptional and possibly the best service in the State. Post Covid, we had a lot of debates about that and we do not have them anymore. I repeat that we will welcome any opportunity for An Garda Síochána to digitise its records. We maintain a good relationship with An Garda Síochána, and where we can work more closely together and where the Deputy can feed in this level of constructive criticism, I see no reason not to take it on board.