Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the House. This has been a constructive debate and I would not describe it as a waste of time. All of us, on a cross-party basis, have faced challenges relating to this issue. It is difficult because there is, at times, a sense of powerlessness, or there has been, as to whether we can help to get someone sorted with a passport. It is also important to recognise the challenges the Passport Office has faced. I salute all of the staff of the Passport Office. I cannot imagine how difficult the past year has been. The staff have gone to enormous lengths in terms of their hours of work and dedication. The reality is that at times they have faced a tsunami of applications, which has proven incredibly challenging to them and frustrating to the public.

I want to be constructive so it is important to acknowledge the steps that have been taken to hire additional staff. That is essential. The only point I would make in that regard is perhaps it could have been anticipated and those steps could have been taken a little sooner. I take the point the Minister made that this is something that must be done physically on-site. That is a valid point and shows the challenges the Minister has been facing over the past considerable amount of time.

I am no different from anyone else in that I have experienced people who have been unable to get passports in urgent situations. It has been incredibly upsetting for them. The key thing is to see what lessons we can learn. This does not happen often but I want to compliment Fine Gael because the wording of this motion is good and detailed. I particularly highlight the section which calls on the Government "to implement a system whereby citizens can collect their passport from a Passport Service public office on request, in cases of emergency and urgent travel, where the passport will not be received in time for travel through the postal system". That is key. The lesson that must be learned is that the Passport Office, which has done tremendous work in incredibly difficult circumstances, needs to find better ways of being accessible to the public. We all know that one of the biggest frustrations has been that people cannot get through to the office and, in fairness, that is why the Oireachtas line has been so useful. At least we can try to make contact that way. My colleague, Senator Ó Donnghaile, made the most important point.When people are really stressed and are struggling to get a passport that it is urgent - and it is always urgent - they really want to talk to a human being, but even in the best circumstances, that has not always been possible. I understand why it has not been possible but that leads to huge frustration. If we are to accept the spirit of the point in the Private Member's motion, then we should be calling on the Passport Office to look at where it can open additional offices for outreach. The other difficulty, and we have all experienced this, is that when people have to come to Dublin to collect a passport in person, the Passport Office is probably one of the hardest places to get to. When people get to the M50, it still takes them another hour to get to the office. Why do we not make more use of Cork? I note the point that 2,500 emergency appointments have been facilitated but why not see if we can do more? Why not finally embrace the idea of opening an office in Northern Ireland? Why would we not do that? Is that not the right thing to do anyway in terms of where we are with the peace process and reaching out to people? It would make sense. Again, people do not want to be travelling from Donegal to Dublin in an emergency and they should not have to do so in this day and age. It should be possible to do as I suggest. I ask the Department to take on that particular point in the motion and see how we can develop the service to make it easier for people to speak to a human being in emergency situations.

As has been mentioned previously, it has been a particularly challenging time for those with foreign birth certificates and the process involved there. Since Brexit, very many people want to get an Irish passport and there have been difficulties. Members of my own extended family had the experience of being locked in the system without a response for a year and then being told the original certificate sent in does not look like an original. There was a huge sense of powerlessness for many. That said, I must acknowledge that when I reached out to the Minister's office, there was delivery. It is important to acknowledge that people at all levels have done their best to respond. That is the fairest thing to say. We can learn lessons from this, which is important because, let us be clear, the foreign birth registration office is going to be nothing but busier in the next couple of years. Let us make sure it is fully resourced and that the timeline of two years is cut down substantially. That is in our interests. We want people who want to get Irish passports to have a good experience so that they feel welcome and feel this is something the country wants to see. There are lessons to be learned in relation to this process.

I want to recognise and support this motion on behalf of Sinn Féin. I hope this debate will lead to broader thinking on the issues I have raised.