Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I strongly urge anyone who is considering travelling overseas this year, especially families with young children, to check the validity of their passports before booking travel and to apply for their passports online in plenty of time. I cannot emphasise that point enough. If an application is online, we can do all sorts of things with the system when there is an urgent need to get that passport through the process, quickly. If it is a paper application, it is a much more complicated process and it stalls the whole system when we try to find a paper application that is out of the ordinary. Online applications are what we need to do.

In order to ensure their applications are complete and that their passports can be issued without delay, citizens should pay close attention to the instructions provided and submit the correct supporting documentation to the passport service in a timely manner following their online registrations. In the case of children, these important documents include witnessed identity and consent forms. The passport service cannot process an application without these supporting documents and, unfortunately, applications that are incomplete will, for obvious reasons, take longer to process.

All Irish citizens, including children, can use the online system to renew their passports from anywhere in the world. Passport online can also be accessed by first-time applicants, irrespective of age, in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US. More than 90% of applications are now made online, compared to 47% of applications received online in 2019. It is a dramatic change. In the space of two years, despite Covid, we have gone from just over 45% to 90% online which means we can put much more streamlined and efficient systems in place to respond to increased demand.

The passport online service is four times quicker than paper-based applications for adult and child renewal applications and is the fastest, easiest and safest way to apply for a passport. I thank Members of the Seanad for their interest in the further development of a modern and responsive passport service. I know we still have work to do. We are putting a whole new system in place which will be in place at some point next year, but this is a bit like reform in the health service. One has to keep the system running efficiently with a dramatic increase in demand, while designing and putting in place an entirely new system. That is the challenge for us over the coming 15 months.