Written answers

Thursday, 17 June 2021

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Passport Services

Photo of Michael RingMichael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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299. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade when a passport will issue to a person (details supplied) considering that the application was received by the passport office some time ago; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32597/21]

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Passport service has been in direct contact with the applicant referred to in the Deputy's question.

The Passport Service commenced the scaling up of operations on 4 May 2021 in line with the phased easing of restrictions set out in “COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery 2021 – The Plan Ahead”.

The Service has been focused since then on four priority areas.

- Clearing the COVID-19 backlog of 89,000 passport applications.

- Processing all adult renewal applications (including new applications) within 10 working days.

- Processing urgent and emergency applications.

- Providing of customer services through phone and web chat.

Substantial progress has been made in clearing the COVID-19 backlog of 89,000 passport applications. In summary 52,000 of these passports have been issued so far. Our phone and web chat services are available to all people whose passport applications have unfortunately been affected by COVID-19 restrictions.

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