Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus leis na Comhaltaí go léir sa Seanad. Tá áthas orm an deis seo a bheith agam chun díospóireacht a dhéanamh ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo agus chun míniú a thabhairt ar an stádas reatha i seirbhís na bpasanna sa tír seo.

As we all know, the passport service was the subject of much public attention earlier this year as it dealt with an unprecedented demand as many of our citizens prepared for their first holidays overseas for some time. I am glad many Irish people got the opportunity to go abroad this year. The majority were able to get their passports and do so. That is a sign of a country that, despite our challenges, is doing well and where many people - we want there to be more - are able to avail of holidays abroad. Of course, passports in other cases were needed for purposes other than holidays, but the majority were for holidays.

Now that the dust has settled on the summer, I do not wish only to address the motion before us but to update the House on the significant improvements that have been made by the passport service this year. I thank the staff in the Passport Office for the more positive position we are in now. Senators will have seen in their constituency offices a significant drop in inquiries about passports from constituents and so on. Senators will be pleased to hear that the service in the Passport Office has returned to pre-Covid levels. I wish to make a few key points. The passport service has issued more than 940,000 passports this year. This is more passports than were issued in total in 2019, which was previously busiest year. This year, we will issue more than 1 million passports. We can be proud of this significant milestone. Of the 1 million, 10% or more will issue to Northern Ireland. There may be up to 130,000 successful applications for passports from Northern Ireland, although this year's figures are not finalised.

Turnaround times for online applications are now in line with normal pre-Covid processing times. Some 99% of all online applications are processed within the standard turnaround times and 84% of adult online renewal applications are being processed in three working days or less. This means that, if someone is renewing a passport, he or she can apply on a Monday and will more than likely have that passport in his or her hand by Wednesday or Thursday. This summer, a constituent called me on a Sunday night. He was travelling on Wednesday but his passport was out of date. I said we would try to help but that the best thing he could do would be to apply online there and then. He had the passport on the Tuesday. That is testament to our system. Almost half of child online renewal passports are issued in three working days or less.

Some comparisons have been made with Britain, although I am not sure they are entirely accurate. In Britain, it currently takes ten weeks to get a UK passport. In the USA, it takes seven to ten weeks. The Irish passport service is doing considerably better than that. For the majority of people, it has been doing considerably better than that all throughout this year. That almost half of child online renewal passports are issued within three working days is an incredible turnaround.

I understand the reasoning behind the motion, but the public is ahead of us. Almost everyone is applying online and, for those who are not, the unified message from the Seanad should be that they should apply online. There is no one on this island who needs to apply by paper. We should tell people not to go to the post office to post an application and instead to apply online. I am sure Deputies and Senators will be more than happy to assist constituents, as we have done, to fill out the form online, given that applicants will get their passports more quickly that way.

There are some issues with first-time passports, which were taking longer to issue. They will always take longer because of the security checks that need to take place. Even then, first-time applications that were taking 40 working days in March are now taking 20 working days or less. If someone's passport is out of date for more than five years, the application becomes a first-time application again. The reason for this is simple. The Department, due to data protection regulations and its own procedures, does not hold for more than 15 years the information that someone provides. As such, it no longer has the information to do a standard renewal and must go through the process all over again. We have seen some cases where people were not expecting delays but whose applications necessarily took longer because of data protection issues arising from their passports being out of date for more than five years. We need to warn people about this so that they are aware of it.

All calls to the customer service hub are being answered within five minutes - this is good and I thank the staff - and 95% of web chat inquiries are being answered consistently by the service. Currently, the Passport Office does not accept urgent appointments just to deal with queries. All queries have to go through the customer service hub, be they via phone calls or online. All that is done in person in the office is accepting urgent applications for passports. Citizens who want to inquire about the status of their applications or who have questions while they are putting their applications together can access the information they need through the hub. We have put in place a number of staffing measures to ensure this excellent level of customer service continues in the long term, particularly coming up to next summer. We had a peak at this time last year coming up to October when people were taking a chance. For them, it was their first break in a number of years.I do not see any sign of that at the moment but again if people have not checked their passports and they are going away at Hallowe'en, they should do so now. This is an unprecedented investment by the Government in this citizens' central service. That is for citizens of the entire island and all around the world. We have had 11 competitions for staff and doubled the number of staff since June of last year. We have provided new office space at the Balbriggan campus which can now accommodate over 500 staff who deal with the day-to-day processing of applications. Balbriggan is a huge operation and a massive economic boon to the area and to my own Meath East constituency.

When considering the decision as to whether to open offices, the Department has to look at a range of things. What efficiencies could be gained? Do we improve the overall level of service? Does it complement the digital first approach that promotes the use of Passport Online? Above everything else, everybody should apply online. Finally, are the substantial costs involved outweighed by the potential benefits? At the moment we have the Passport Office in Mount Street, the place in Balbriggan and an office in Cork city. London was mentioned as well. London does not really print, I think. It takes a long time to turn around a passport. The offices in Mount Street and Cork have public counters. They offer urgent appointment services for those who wish to renew their passport within one or four days in Dublin or within four days in Cork. If Senators listened to what I said earlier, 84% of online adult renewals and 50% of child online renewals are taking three working days or less, meaning that for most people the Passport Online service is faster than going to the office in Dublin or Cork in person. These are really important messages to get across to the public. Our teams are doing fantastic work.

Recent figures show that just 28% of the urgent appointments at the moment are looked for. Of the available appointments, just over a quarter are being filled at the moment. That was different during the summer, we all know it was difficult to get an appointment. It has changed dramatically. About 1% of all passports arise from people going to the office in Dublin or Cork. If there are 11,000 a month from the North of Ireland, out of that we can still say it is about 1%, so about 110 people from the North of Ireland are coming to the office in Dublin, probably, on a monthly basis at the moment. Those are the figures we have. We want to reduce that even more. There is no question about it. I think the constituent I advised would have gone and looked for an emergency appointment only I said he should chance the online application and I thought he would be okay. We can never give guarantees, of course. I suspect that even some of those in Northern Ireland who come down would probably have got it more quickly online. Can I also say, for anybody who is dealing with a death abroad or anything like that, the Department pulls out all the stops. The staff really do.