Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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Question 113: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the reason a passport has not been issued in respect of a person (details supplied). [24594/11]

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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An application for a passport for the child in question was made in March, 2011. This was done under the provisions of the Passports Act, 2008, which provides, that this Department must be satisfied that an applicant is an Irish citizen before issuing him/her a passport. In this particular case the child was born in England. Her mother was born in South Africa and even though she is an Irish passport holder since 2004, this does not confer automatic Irish citizenship entitlement to any children that she may have that were born abroad.

Accordingly the applicant's entitlement to Irish citizenship is based on an Irish-born maternal grandparent. In such cases, a person must apply for Irish citizenship through the Foreign Births Registration process to the Consular Section in my Department. Successful applicants are issued with certificates of registration which are required for the purposes of passport applications.

No such certificate or any other acceptable evidence of the child's entitlement to Irish citizenship was presented with the passport application and accordingly, the application could not be approved. The Passport Service wrote to the applicant's parents on 14 April, 2011 to advise of the position and requested specific additional documentary evidence to demonstrate the child's entitlement to Irish citizenship. While no reply has been received in the interim the application remains open.

In order to finalise the application to passport issue, the child in question must first be registered in the Foreign Births Register. Once this is done, the parents must submit the certificate of registration to the Passport Service where it will be associated with the current application form.

The Consular Division of the Department received an application for Foreign Births registration on 19th May 2011 and has been in contact with the applicant in relation to outstanding documentation as recently as 6th September last. When this documentation is received the application for Foreign Birth Registration can be fully considered.