Written answers

Tuesday, 10 May 2022

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Passport Services

Photo of Ruairi Ó MurchúRuairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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104. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if consideration will be given to opening an Irish passport office in Northern Ireland given the demands on the Passport Office; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22984/22]

Photo of Thomas GouldThomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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120. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will consider using a passport printer in the Cork Passport Office. [22891/22]

Photo of Alan DillonAlan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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139. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will initiate discussions with the aim of opening a Passport Office for urgent appointment services in the west, similar to the Office that is in place for the south and east of the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22973/22]

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 104, 120 and 139 together.

The Passport Service is a unified service composed of three constituent offices located in Lower Mount Street and Balbriggan in Dublin and South Mall in Cork, respectively. Passport applications from all citizens - whether at home or abroad - are distributed for processing across the three Passport Offices, on the basis of the type of application rather than county or country of residence of the applicant.

Over 90% of all passport applications, including first time applications, are now being made through Passport Online. The Passport Service is committed to continuing to offer a range of application channels, including an offline service for citizens who are not eligible or do not wish to use the Passport Online service.

Passport Online is the priority channel for applications as there are many efficiencies built into the system for both the applicant and the Passport Service. All Irish citizens, including children, can use the online system to renew their passports from anywhere in the world. Passport Online can be accessed by all first time applicants, both children and adults, in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA, South Africa, Singapore, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mauritius, Lesotho, Colombia, Panama, Chile, Peru and Ecuador. 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.

The paper-based, mail-in "Passport Express" service is available to citizens at almost 1,000 An Post post offices and at over 70 post office locations in Northern Ireland. With the availability of both Passport Online and Passport Express very few applicants are required to travel a significant distance in order to apply for their passport. In the relatively small number of cases where citizens need to travel urgently and do not have a valid passport, the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork offer an Urgent Appointment service for passport renewal with a 1 or 4-day turnaround. The Passport Service offices in Dublin and Cork have processed 4,774 Urgent Appointments to date in 2022. These Urgent Appointment applications represents just 0.9% of the total 540,000 applications received by the Passport Service since January of this year.

The Passport Service operates three passport printing machines, two of which are located in the main production facility in Balbriggan and the third in the Passport Office in Lower Mount Street, Dublin. All production facilities can print a passport, irrespective of the channel through which the application is processed. Each passport printer has a printing capacity of 250 passports per hour and the system allows for flexibility between printing machines if any one machine has reached capacity.

The Cork office can facilitate the issuance on the spot of an emergency passport where there is an urgent need to travel for medical reasons or due to a bereavement abroad.

I am satisfied overall that the range of service options and the printing capacity of production equipment meets the current needs of passport applicants and that recent service improvements allow the Passport Service to provide this essential citizen service in an efficient and effective manner. While there are no plans to open additional passport offices, the Passport Service will continue to consider ways in which to enhance customer experience for citizens.

I strongly urge anyone who is considering travelling overseas this year, particularly families with young children, to check the validity of their passports before booking travel and to apply for their passports online in plenty of time.

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