Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was only 600,000-odd last year, so the turnaround has been incredible. The number of passports that have been delivered this year has been incredible. Senator Wilson said we need to get the awareness out that people should renew their passports at off-peak times, and I agree with him. He mentioned we will be in the same predicament next summer. We will not really because last summer was unique. There were almost three years backlog of people looking for passports last summer, and that will not be the case next summer. It will be just a normal summer such as we had in 2018 or 2019.

The other reason it will be different is that we now have almost double the number of staff working in the Passport Office. Therefore, because of the work the Passport Office has done, I think we will be in a much stronger position next summer than we have ever been before. It is important to recognise, however, that the Passport Office was under immense pressure in the past year or so. There was a point when I was dealing with more than 100 people looking for passports all at the same time. Luckily, we got almost all of them sorted in time, which is an immense credit to the Department, to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, to the Minister of State and to everyone who works in the Passport Office for the work that has been done over recent months. I have dealt with so many people who thought they would not get their passports in time but who got them about 24 hours before their flights went out, and they are so grateful that that was done.

One thing I will say about paper applications, and I wonder if the Minister of State could look at this-----