Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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895. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade when the passport office will reopen as normal; when persons can expect to have their expired passports renewed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20787/21]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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In line with the National Framework on Living with COVID-19, the Passport Service continues to provide a high-quality essential service in line with Government measures to reduce social contact and combat the spread of COVID-19.

This essential service is available for those who are required to travel due to the death or serious illness of a family member or meet the criteria for travel as defined in the amendment to the Health Act 1947, which came into effect on 1 February 2021. Supporting documentation is required in such cases.

Applicants who require an urgent or emergency passport, can contact the Passport Service via our Customer Service Hub Webchat function on our website.

Irish citizens who are resident overseas should continue to contact the Passport Service through the local Irish Embassy or Consulate General who continue to provide assistance to all our citizens abroad.

Staff of the Passport Service continue to produce emergency and urgent applications, to offer customer service through WebChat, to assist with consular assistance for Irish citizens overseas and temporary reassignment of staff to the Department of Health. As well as issuing almost 3,000 urgent and emergency passports, the Passport Service has issued approximately 35,000 passports since the beginning of the year. Our Webchat team have also responded to more than 36,000 queries.

While normal processing has paused the Passport Service has a comprehensive plan in place to resume all services, and will do so as soon as possible in line with the National Framework for Living with COVID-19. At present, there are approximately 89,000 Passport Online applications in the system. The return of operations will commence with all applications received via Passport Online. The Passport Service is confident, taking into account measures to ensure a safe workplace, that any Passport Online backlog can be cleared in six to eight weeks.

There are currently approximately 1,900 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 as a priority after online applications have been processed.