Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Question 280: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the reason for the difficulty in issuing a passport for a person (details supplied) in County Monaghan in view of the fact that they were previously issued a passport and the current application is simply to replace the first passport which has been lost. [19736/08]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Passport Office can only issue a passport to an Irish Citizen. The person in question was born in Ireland in 2005. Under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 2004, persons born in the State after 1 January 2005, where neither parent is an Irish or British citizen or otherwise entitled to reside without restriction in the State or in Northern Ireland, may claim citizenship by birth in the State only where a parent has been lawfully resident in the State for 3 years of the 4 years preceding their birth. In all such cases, it is the practice of the Passport Office to seek evidence, in the form of official documentation, of lawful residence in the State by one or both parents.

An application for an Irish passport was first submitted on behalf of the child by his mother to the Passport Office in November, 2005. This application was approved and a passport was issued in December, 2005. The passport was reported lost by the applicant's mother and an application for a replacement passport was received on 21 February, 2008. In line with routine procedure in respect of lost or stolen passports, it was necessary for the applicant's mother to re-submit original papers including evidence of citizenship. Upon checking of these papers, it was the view — wrongly as it turned out — that satisfactory evidence of reckonable residency in the State had not been provided and that the applicant's entitlement to Irish citizenship had not been established. The application was therefore rejected on 10 March, 2008.

Both applications were subsequently re-examined in detail by the Passport Office. Based on this review, the Passport Office is satisfied that the applicant is a citizen and therefore entitled to an Irish passport. A replacement passport was issued on 16 May 2008. The Passport Office has also been in contact with the applicant's mother to apologise for the error and for the inconvenience.