Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome to the Minister to the Chamber and thank him for taking the motion. I also thank the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Brophy and his staff, the staff at the Passport Office, and the Minister's own staff, including Ms Laura McGonigle, who has done incredible work, especially on passports that are difficult cases. As public representatives we all deal with cases that are difficult.

We must recognise that of the volume of passports that go through the Passport Office, the vast majority go through without any problem whatsoever. If one looks back on 2021, more than 600,000 passports were completed by the office. This is more than 50,000 per month, and the vast majority are processed without any issue at all.

It is also important to recognise that although passports have become a big issue in the past weeks because of the reopening of the country, the Minister and his Department have recognised this for quite some time. This is why he secured an extra €10 million in this year's budget for passport services. This is why there is a major reform in the core technology being used by the Passport Office, which hopes to come into play in 2023. This will be very important. Most importantly, this is why the Minister has increased the numbers of staff working in passport services. Last June there were 450 staff working in the Passport Office. As of yesterday I believe that number is now at 760. By the end of March it is hoped to be 900 This is a doubling of staff numbers. It shows to us the importance the Minister places on the office and the role it will have during 2022.

It is important also to recognise the reopening of the urgent passport service. That happened in the Cork and Dublin offices in September and October. I believe just over 2,300 passports have been facilitated through that process. This is a really important system because, for whatever reason, many people realise their passports are out of date only when they are packing a few days before they leave. That service is there for them. It is there primarily for emergency cases, but it is important the service is there. I am aware it was closed during Covid . I believe that it should have been seen as an emergency service during that time, and it was disappointing that it was closed. It is now open and working well, which is very important.

A number of people spoken about new locations for printing machines. An obvious thing that politicians sometimes say is, "We should have one in the west of Ireland" or "We should have one in Cork". The priority is not the location; the priority is whether we can facilitate demand in 2022. I would like the Minister's view on that. We have three printing machines at the moment, two of which are in Balbriggan, I believe, and one in Lower Mount Street. Do we have the capability and the facilities to meet that demand? The number of passport applications anticipated in 2022 is approximately 1.7 million, which is huge. The demand has never broken 1 million before. Back in 2019 it was just under 1 million and last year it was 650,000 applications. It is a huge increase and it is about whether we can facilitate that.

A number of people have also asked why we are not prepared for 2022, which is a fair question.The honest answer, and I think the Minister prepared as best he could, is that we did not know when the country would reopen. What we learned in the past three weeks is that once the Taoiseach announced that the country was going to reopen and that almost all Covid-19 restrictions were ending, people felt excited about going back to normal. Part of that involved being able to take summer holidays. What has happened since is many people who had not applied for passports, predominantly for children, over the past two years, when there was no need to apply because nobody could go anywhere, have now decided that this summer will be an opportunity for them to go on holiday. It might well be the first holiday for their children. That is why people applied for passports quite quickly after the Taoiseach's announcement. Large numbers of people, higher than ever before, have applied this month. Most of them, we hope, are applying for passports to enable them to go on summer holidays, so it gives them ample opportunity to receive their passports. The context here may be the campaign by the Minister’s Department and the passport service to remind people to apply for passports.

We should, however, look at several things that we could change in the service and, in a broader context, in businesses such as how the system can better facilitate first-time passport applicants and those seeking passport renewals. One suggestion from the Fine Gael group of Senators tabling the motion is a reminder service in the form of an email that would be sent to people whose passports are out of date. It would be like the process undertaken with motor tax payments. Many people, including myself, would not pay their motor tax, if they did not get the email to remind them that it is due at the end of the month. If we could have a system where a similar reminder is issued to notify people that their passports will be out of date in six months, then that would give people ample opportunity to act.

There is also an opportunity here for businesses in the aviation sector, such as Aer Lingus, Ryanair and travel agencies, to make changes to their processes. When people book holidays and flights, they should be requested to enter their passport number and the expiry date. Such a mechanism would give people ample opportunity to renew their passports, if need be. A requirement to enter passport details, including the expiry date, will mean that people will have to go and find their passports to complete a booking. It would mean that people would find out then and there that their passports are not in date or might have less than six months' validity remaining. These are all new ways of reminding people of the need to renew their passports and of alerting them to problems that might arise before it is too late.

Another issue we as public representatives sometimes have concerns people waiting on passports. The passport has been printed by the Passport Office, but it goes into the post on a Friday. Someone may be flying out on a Saturday, but the passport will not arrive until Monday. A central base where passports could be collected, a kind of public passport service area, would be hugely beneficial. We often have situations where people are trying to ring An Post to find out where their passport is, and if it can be found and removed, this might be a simple way of solving that problem. Another possibility, if staff numbers are increased in the Passport Office, might be to explore a seven-day rota system. It might certainly be necessary for a short time while we are dealing with the kind of demand that we expect to have in 2022.

Overall, however, it is important to recognise that every issue we are going to discuss for the next hour and a half or two hours are issues the Minister saw coming down the track six months ago. We will also discuss the measures and decisions he made six months ago in the context of this predicted challenge. I acknowledge the hard work undertaken by him, his staff and the staff of the Passport Office and the great deal of work they will also be doing in 2022.