Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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72. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of Irish passport applications made, by country, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53405/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Tracking of passport applications is in general carried out against channel of application rather than by other metrics, including country of origin.Bearing this in mind, the following general breakdown of applications will give the available detail on the volume of overseas applications received to date this year.

From 1 January 2017 to date, the Passport Service has received 585,798 applications from citizens resident in Ireland and 69,887 applications from citizens resident in Northern Ireland. In the same time period, the Passport Service has received a total of at least 126,031 passport applications from citizens residing outside of the island of Ireland.

Passport applications from persons outside the island of Ireland may be submitted either via the online passport renewal service at or through the network of Irish Embassies and Consulates worldwide and a separate table is included below for the applications made through each of these channels.

In the case of table 1 (overseas applications via the online system), a breakdown is included based on the applicant’s postal address.

In the case of table 2 (overseas applications via the Embassy network), it is not possible to provide a clear breakdown by country of residence of the applicant, because many Irish Embassies are accredited to and provide passport services for Irish citizens in more than one country. An indicative breakdown by receiving mission is included, although it should be noted that it is not necessarily the case that passport applications would have been received from each accredited State.

Table 1: applications from outside the island of Ireland submitted to date in 2017 via the online renewal service

Table 2: indicative list of applications submitted to date in 2017 via Irish Embassies and Consulates*

*Note: Many Irish Embassies are accredited to and provide passport services for Irish citizens in more than one country. The following table is organised by receiving Mission and is indicative only. Not all accreditations are listed; and listing does not necessarily mean that passport applications have been received from each State of accreditation.