Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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72. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of times the online passport service has gone down in each of the past 12 months; the number of complaints that have been received as a result; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5373/22]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Passport Online service offers Irish citizens the ability to apply online for their passport 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is a user-friendly, efficient service that consistently offers processing times up to 4 times faster than paper-based passport renewal applications. 90% of all passport applications are received through Passport Online.

All Irish citizens, including children, can use the online system to renew their passports from anywhere in the world. Passport Online can also be accessed by first time applicants, irrespective of age in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA.

The Passport Online service was temporarily offline due to technical difficulties on four dates over the past year.

The Passport Service regrets that Passport Online experienced technical issues last week. Despite these issues, over 32,000 applications were submitted via Passport Online last week.

A scheduled system upgrade that will improve the responsiveness and efficiency of the system was completed on Friday, January 28th. This upgrade has addressed the issues experienced by some customers. Since the upgrade was completed, Passport Online has been fully functional and operating smoothly.

The Passport Service ensures that customers are fully informed of any scheduled downtime or technical issues with Passport Online via its social media accounts and on the Passport Online website.

The Passport Service has no record of any official complaints regarding Passport Online downtime over the past 12 months. The Customer Service Hub did experience an increase in calls and webchat enquiries as a result of the intermittent downtime last week and the Customer Service team advised all enquirers of the temporary nature of the issue.