Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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53. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of new staff who have been employed by his Department in the past two years to deal with the increased volume of applications for passports due to Brexit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12704/18]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Managing our response to Brexit has impacted on the work of many staff across the entire range of work of the Department. Following the UK Referendum on EU membership in June 2016, the Passport Service identified an increase in passport applications from Irish citizens in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The Passport Service monitors the volume of applications on an ongoing basis to ensure that resources are available to meet demand. In order to respond to anticipated application increases and to seasonal demands, the Passport Service received sanction for 220 Temporary Clerical Officers (TCOs) this year to be appointed to the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork. The vast majority of these TCOs are already in place with the remaining TCOs expected to be fully trained and in place by the end of March at latest.

The following table details the number of Full Time Equivalent Staff permanently employed by my Department and assigned to the Passport Service on January 1 for each year requested:

This year, since the above figures were released, over 20 permanent staff have started with the Passport Service.

In managing increasing application volumes, my Department’s approach has not been merely to recruit or assign additional staff but to continue to implement service improvements in order to provide an exceptional service and minimise the impact exceptionally high application volumes have on turnaround times. The Passport Reform Programme is delivering major upgrades to the passport service technology platforms and business processes as well as significant customer service improvements. The award winning online passport application service, which was launched last year, will continue to make a major contribution to the effective management of exceptionally high volumes by allowing existing resources to be more effectively deployed within the Passport Service.