Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

It is a cause for concern but the Minister of State's assurance that there would be no breach beyond the Passport Office is to be welcomed.

The Minister of State gave the reasons when passports will be refused, such as, false applications, the position of false passports, use of cancelled passports and so on. I am pleased a unit has been established within the Passport Office with trained staff who will be able to scrutinise the applications.

I am concerned about the matter of lost and stolen passports. When that happens one is required to notify the Minister and the Garda. To give a small example, I was standing in a queue at the airport a year ago when the person in front of me was asked to present his or her tickets and passport, only to discover he or she did not have a passport. The queue was held up in a natural way but it meant there was panic. All the person could be told was to contact the Garda or the Minister. This was in the middle of a queue at 9 a.m. It is important to have an official or sub-office at airports, throughout the country to handle such situations. It could be a panic situation. One could have been getting one's children ready to go on holidays and left the passport on the table. In that case the family cannot travel. That is what happened on that day to the family in question because the passports were not available. Rightly, the family had to be refused permission to travel.

With all the advances in technology, such as the biometric system, I would like to think there was some mechanism in place whereby it would be possible to put up on screen the person's details, following which a temporary passport could be issued to allow the person travel. I ask the Minister of State to look again at that issue. It is not fair to the genuine people. I appreciate we have to be extra careful and stringent in regard to analysing the passport application and so on but these are genuine examples and there should be some facilities within our airports to handle such situations.

The Minister of State said the main Passport Office was being transferred to Balbriggan. I ask that we have a passport office in all the major cities to make it easy for people to make application. Given the advances in application procedures which the Bill has outlined it would be quite simple to have offices throughout the country. People should not have to make application through the post. There may be problems and it would be nice if they could be sorted out locally. Many families would prefer to do that than travel to Dublin.

On the whole, the Bill is a good one. The sections cover very wide areas. We are living in an age of huge international security problems, international crime, trafficking and the aftermath of 11 September 2001 and the Columbia Three. There are sophisticated criminals trafficking who can disguise passports. Therefore, it is necessary that these reforms be put in place. Nevertheless, I ask the Minister of State to reconsider the position regarding lost and stolen passports.