Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The number of online passport applications received by county in 2019, 2020, 2021, and to date in 2022 are outlined below in tabular form. These figures apply to online applications only. Due to the way in which the address fields on the paper application form are formatted, it is not possible to provide the requested figures in relation to paper-based applications. 

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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334. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of staff working in the Passport Office in the past three years in tabular form; if Covid-19 restrictions have led to a backlog of passport applications; if so, the extent of the backlog; if additional staff were recruited to deal with the backlog since Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27760/22]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 330 and 334 together.

Over half a million passports have been issued so far this year. Last year, 634,000 passports were issued in the whole year. In less than five months, the Passport Service has issued over 80% of the total number of passports that were issued in the whole of last year.

The Passport Service is already out-performing any previous year, despite the challenges that it has encountered over the past two years. In 2019, which was the busiest year for passports pre-Covid, the Passport Service had issued 445,000 passports by the third week of May. In the same time period this year, over 520,000 passports have been issued.

99% of all child and adult online renewal applications are issued within the standard turnaround time and almost half of all adults who renew their passports online will receive their new passport in the post within 2 working days. This compares very favourably with passport services internationally.

The Passport Service is experiencing a very high volume of applications and is currently processing over 25,000 applications per week.  While the numbers of applications in the system is high, there is a continuous stream of new applications coming in and a dispatch of completed passports being sent out every day.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Passport Service have been proactively planning for this significant increase in demand for many months and have made an unprecedented investment in the staffing and resources necessary to meet this demand.

Since March, processing times for first time applications have already been reduced by 25% and applications now take 30 working days rather than 40 days. From Monday, 6 June, it is hoped that, based on current trends, this processing time will decrease yet again to 25 working days for first time applications. That means that, in the space of three months, processing time for first-time applications will have been reduced by almost 40% as a direct result of the substantial level of investment that the Department has made in the Passport Service.

The Passport Service has been scaling up resources to deal with anticipated demand since June of last year. A major recruitment drive, in partnership with the Public Appointments Service, has been underway over the past several months. This has seen the number of Passport Service staff increase by 344 since June 2021.

In addition, the Passport Service has run its own recruitment competition for Temporary Clerical Officers (TCOs). The interviews have concluded and TCOs recruited from this competition are being assigned on a weekly basis. The first group began work on Monday, 23 May. This recruitment effort will bring staffing numbers at the Passport Service to over 900 which represents double the number of staff with the Passport Service in June of last year.

Intensive training of new staff and upskilling of existing staff has been underway for several months to increase the resources that can process complex applications, such as first time child applications.

I am confident that the additional staff assigned to the Passport Service will help to reduce passport turnaround times in the course of 2022 and will assist in meeting the high demand forecast for this year.

The staffing numbers within the Passport Service fluctuate throughout the year depending on the level of demand. The table below outlines the number of staff in the Passport Service during the first quarter of each year since 2019. 

Staffing numbers at the Passport Service in Quarter 1, 2019-2022