Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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411. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of persons waiting for passports; and the average wait time by county in tabular form. [4361/21]

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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413. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of standard passport applications on hold awaiting processing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4390/21]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 411 and 413 together.

At present, there are approximately 40,000 Passport Online applications in the system. Of these, approximately half are from the island of Ireland and half are from the rest of the world. The Passport Service have requested that applicants refrain from submitting documents until we resume operations. Applicants will be notified by e-mail when we resume processing.

There are currently approximately 5,900 paper based applications in the system. The Passport Service plans to resume processing of routine paper based applications such as Passport Express and Northern Ireland Passport Express Level 3 of the framework. These figures are accurate as of 22 January 2021.

The Passport Service has a great deal of experience in dealing with peaks in demand, and we are confident that any backlog will be cleared quickly. When the Passport Service resumed operations in June 2020, the backlog was cleared in four weeks. It was similar in December 2020 with the majority of the backlog cleared within three weeks.

The Passport Service cannot provide average waiting times by county as applications are processed in the order of receipt, not by county. However, we can provide the approximate number of applications per county under process as set out in the table below.

This is correct to the 20th January 2021.