David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the changes, if any, which have been made to the Duty Officer Service dealing with the issuing of passports and other emergency situations outside of office hours; if the review of the service in the context of budgetary pressures has been completed; if changes are to be made as a result of this review; the impact of same on the level of service provision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42899/12]

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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The Passport Service operated by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has public offices in Dublin and Cork as well as a production facility in Balbriggan and provides a Monday-Friday passport service to all its customers. In particular, applicants through the Passport Express postal service which is available at all Post Offices can normally expect to receive their new passports within ten days. The Passport Service also currently provides emergency out-of-hours passport services in Dublin and Cork. The Department also operates an out of hours Duty Officer arrangement to deal with consular and other non-passport emergencies. The need to assess all services with a view to achieving cost savings has given rise to a full review of the Department’s duty officer services in Ireland. This has resulted in a proposal for a new integrated duty officer service based in Dublin which will deal with all emergencies, including emergency passport services to the country as a whole. The cost of maintaining emergency passport duty officer services in Dublin and Cork separate from the diplomatic duty officer is no longer seen as justified from a cost/benefit perspective. For example, the emergency service in Cork costs €575 per week and has issued approximately 1.3 passports per week in the year to date. Departmental management and the Staff Side unions are working together to finalise the operational aspects of the proposed new integrated duty officer service. The sanction of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform for certain aspects will also be required. It is hoped that the new service will be operational from late November, yielding savings of in excess of €67,000 per annum.