Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. As colleagues have said, none of us necessarily wants to be having this debate but I commend the Fine Gael group on putting forward the motion. It is an issue that has been raised in a cross-party way across the House. I commend the Minister and his officials on the efforts they have been making to address this. It is important to put on the record our appreciation of his work on a number of international issues in recent weeks. It is also important to acknowledge the work of his officials. The officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Passport Office do a good job. It is particularly important at the moment, when there are criticisms of the Department of Foreign Affairs and certain actions about which we know they were wrong, but it was a moment and it was a mistake that was shortlived. Those who are trying to conflate those actions with planned parties in Downing Street, while at the same time not apologising for organised military parades on the streets of Belfast, are not showing respect to the officials within the Department of Foreign Affairs.

We need to commend the Passport Office. Renewals are very quick and people talk about 24 hours or 48 hours for a renewal. In the case of compassionate applications for passports, they are often handled very sensitively. Our big difficulty, and the issue on which many of us tend to raise concerns, is around first-time applications for new passports. We know that in the Bible, in Genesis, when God destroyed the world with water, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, when Moses was on Mount Sinai, it was for 40 days and 40 nights, and Jesus was tempted in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.