Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in but, unfortunately, the response which has been prepared for him is rather lame. Why is it inevitable that a switchover from an in-person, public-facing system to a registered postal-only service would cause any delay at all? One could argue it may speed up the process in certain circumstances. I have been given no good reason for the delay, apart from the claim the necessary spacing out of people may contribute to a delay. Surely something such as that could have been overcome relatively quickly.

Certainly, an argument has not been made that staff have been redeployed to deal with other aspects of the Covid-19 emergency. Why do the changes consequent on Covid-19 always seem to lead to delays? The delays in this case have not been justified.

On another matter which relates to the Department of Foreign Affairs, I do not understand why such an enormous backlog has built up in terms of passports. There is a backlog of 92,000 applications at present. That is approximately 9% of the number issued in a normal year. By any yardstick, that is enormous. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, stated it could be cleared in eight to ten weeks but that is difficult to believe, given the passport application system has been under immense pressure for many years now.

I thank the Minister of State for coming in but I am not satisfied with the answer. I understand staff have to socially distance but in the case of passports, it takes just one person to man the machines which produce passports. Surely, in the case of the apostille system, it would have been possible to get over the initial adjustments which needed to be made for safety purposes and to get the system working fast.

A situation in which one has gone from an in-person service to a delay of four weeks is not acceptable. It needs to change quickly.