Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 159: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the steps he has taken to ensure that person who apply for a passport through the passport express service receive their passports on time. [13516/10]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy is aware customers have been experiencing disruption to passport services as a result of ongoing industrial action in the public service. Unfortunately, this has lead to a significant backlog of passport applications leading to significant delays in processing passport applications in the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Department has been advising the pubic of the extent of these problems through media channels, newspaper advertisements and via the Department's website.

On 4 March last the problems being experienced reached a point where the Passport Service had to withdraw the guarantee of turnaround times for all passport applications.

On 16 March last accommodation and equipment in the Passport Office in Molesworth Street were badly damaged as a result of a water leak which occurred through the night before. It was therefore necessary to shut the Molesworth Street operation on that day and services were temporarily provided from some of the Department's other offices in the vicinity. Work on restoring the office is almost complete and over recent days the level of disruption has been kept to a minimum as a result of the contingency arrangements which were put in place.

The Department has contingency measures in place to minimise the disruption to the Passport Service. These include the operation of two production facilities, the primary site based in Balbriggan and a series of passport system redundancy and resilience measures. Additionally the office was able to quickly move staff to work from space in the Department's offices in the city centre.

The industrial action has led to a backlog of nearly 50,000 passport applications in the system and application turnaround time is up to 20 working days. As a result the Department advises that it is not possible to fast-track any application other than in a case of genuine family emergency, in which case proof will be required that travel is necessitated by the death, illness or welfare of a family member. The issuing of passports in such emergencies is not affected by the industrial dispute. Furthermore the public counters and out of hours services should only be used by those who have a necessity to travel for reasons of family emergency. The CPSU have been repeatedly asked to suspend their industrial action by myself and the two main opposition parties.

On Tuesday of this week the CPSU announced their intention to extend the definition of emergency travel to include applications for immediate travel. Unfortunately, the CPSU proposal was not matched by a commitment to suspend or even relax the ongoing industrial action measures so as to allow acceleration in passport production.

Any attempt to implement such arrangements in the absence of a willingness to deal with the causes of the current backlog – the refusal of the unions to allow the deployment of temporary seasonal staff and their ban on working overtime, would result only in the arbitrary prioritisation of some applications at the expense of others and to an increased number of callers at the public office.

Customers are advised to check the expiry dates of passports before making any overseas travel plans and to apply in sufficient time that the new passport can be received before the intended date of travel. In response to the action the Department has temporarily suspended the requirement that applicants submit their existing passport with their application for a new passport. Where the current passport has not yet fully expired customers may include a photocopy of the personal details pages of the current passport with their application for a new passport.

Any member of the public who wants an update on their passport application should use the tracking system on www.passport.ie before attending any passport office.

The Department has also considered the feasibility of automatically extending the period of validity of existing passports. However, international standards on the validity of travel documents prevent this possibility.

The dispute is having major impact on the travelling public. There are very many Irish citizens whose trips abroad have had to be cancelled and holiday and work plans severely disrupted. The resolution of this dispute will occur through the talks processes underway and I call upon the public service unions to defer their action while these talks continue.