Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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118. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade when passport applications will be processed; if an application can be hand delivered to a passport office; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4545/21]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Passport Service has paused processing of routine applications while Ireland is at Level 5 of the National Framework for Living with COVID-19. Passport Service staff have been temporarily reassigned to provide consular assistance for Irish citizens overseas.

The Passport Service continues to provide an emergency passport service for Irish citizens at home and abroad. The service is available for those who are required to travel due to the death or serious illness of a family member or because the applicant requires emergency medical treatment.

Applicants who require a passport for emergency purposes, or to travel for urgent reasons, should contact the Passport Service via our Customer Service Hub Webchat function on our website.

The Passport Service has a comprehensive plan in place to resume all services, in line with the National Framework for Living with COVID-19. When operations resume at Level 4, all applications received via Passport Online will be processed.

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 plans to resume processing of routine paper based applications such as Passport Express, Northern Ireland Passport Express and applications for Foreign Birth Registrations at Level 3 of the National Framework.

The Cork and Dublin Passport Offices were closed to the public on 27 March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The re-opening of the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork to the public is kept under regular review, with due consideration being given to public health protection measures.