Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are all one county - at the moment anyway. There are 167,000 people in Tipperary. There is a vacant office two doors down from my office in Clonmel, so it would be very easy to have a passport office right beside where I am located. Queries about passports are among the queries we get that are actually solvable for people.

On a serious note, however, I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion. Senator Gavan said everyone agrees with the motion. It is not that I agree or disagree with it, and I do not want to be on the side of disagreeing with it. I do not disagree with it because the symbolic nature of it is what is important rather than whether it is necessarily more important to have an office in Belfast than in Mayo or Tipperary or even Dún Laoghaire. There is that symbolic nature of this, which is clearly important. Due to the increase in the uptake of passports in Northern Ireland since Brexit, that is quite clear.

From a practical point of view, if we had a passport office in Belfast - let us say for argument's sake that it would be quite similar to the one in Cork - one would not be able to get one's passport on the day of application. It comes four days later. Therefore, if there were two people in Belfast today, if there were a passport office in Belfast and if one person decided to get an emergency appointment, that person would receive his or her passport four days later. However, if the other person just booked online, he or she would receive a passport within three days. Therefore, in respect of the speed of the Passport Office, because it is so successful at the moment, because there are 570 people, I think, working in the Passport Office, it has one of the fastest turnaround times for passports in the world. The quickest way for anyone to get a passport is just to apply online. We say that to people all the time, and there is still a very small percentage who apply through paper, which is problematic. It would be quicker just to apply online, even if there were a passport office in Belfast. If one lives in Cork, one is much quicker just applying online rather than going in for an emergency appointment in Cork. Therefore, while I accept the symbolic nature of the motion, the practicality is that the quickest possible way to get a passport is just to apply online.

A number of months ago we had a Private Members' motion tabled here by the Fine Gael Party on passports, and representatives of the Passport Office came in along with the Minister, Deputy Coveney. I think they thought they were coming in for a grilling for two hours on the Passport Office and how many people were looking for passports at the time. However, it was a very constructive engagement across all parts of this Chamber. It is important to acknowledge that from that two-hour debate we had in this House, the turnaround in passports has been incredible and the number of passports that have been delivered is incredible. I think it is something like 720,000 this year already.