Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Today, I raise an issue that I have raised previously. Almost every other colleague has raised it before too. It is the infamous issue of passports. We have got away from the pandemic and the backlog it caused. Everyone was given the benefit of the doubt in that situation. I have been contacted by a person who applied for a passport for a child. The application was signed and stamped at a barracks, as required. The person has just received an email stating that as there was no answer when the Passport Office phoned that barracks for clarification on the signature and stamp, it has sent the whole application back to the applicant. This is an application which involves very sad personal circumstances and the return of the application is only compounding the grief of the people involved. To add insult to injury, the story did not end there. The lady in question panicked and went to another barracks. She got the whole thing signed again and sent the application by courier in order that it would be at the Passport Office the next morning and she would receive the passport before Friday, when they are due to fly out. Her efforts were in vain. Lo and behold, our great Passport Office does not accept courier deliveries; applications have to be posted.There is no business in the country that will not accept a courier delivery. There is no business or person in the country who has to ring to clarify an official stamp and official signature on a document. If we all operated like that, the whole country would grind to a halt. The problem with the Passport Office, and I will pull no punches, is management and systems that are all wrong.

I am demanding that the Minister come to this Chamber immediately, if not sooner, in order that we can have a debate on this and the Minister can go back and get the Passport Office management and line service to sort themselves out. As I said, nobody in this day and age will not accept something by courier. If we all had to get clarification and a follow-up phone call for a document received that had an official stamp on it, the whole country would grind to a standstill. It is not good enough. These poor people are suffering through absolutely no fault of their own. We need that debate sooner rather than later.