Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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882. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of additional staff and costing that would be required if her Department's registration office in Burgh Quay had its opening hours extended to 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday. [55336/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Registration Office of my Department is currently open to the public in Burgh Quay from 8am to 9pm Monday to Thursday, and 8am to 6pm on Friday. The Registration Office is also open some weekends during peak demand.

Any person registering for the first time is required to attend at their local registration office in person and, as part of my Department’s ongoing work to meet the demand for first-time registration appointments, on 10 January 2022, a Freephone service (1800 800 630) was introduced for Dublin based customers. 

The current operating hours of the phone-line are 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and all appointments for Dublin based customers to register their immigration permission are now issued through this service. Operators offer one appointment per call, unless it is for an identifiable family group. So far this year, the Registration Office of my Department has dealt with over 37,000 appointments. 

Additionally, if a non-EEA national is residing in the Dublin area and has an existing valid permission to be in the State, then they do not need to seek an appointment to attend in person to renew their permission. An online renewal facility was launched in July 2020 to process renewals and there has been approximately 177,000 registrations renewed online since the facility was launched.

The Registration Office’s customer service team is available to support customers who may have language difficulties or who may need assistance with translation. A number of multi-lingual videos describing the registration process and what to expect are available on my Department's immigration website (www.irishimmigration.ie). 

Customers who have an emergency can contact the Immigration Service Helpdesk by emailing immigrationsupport@justice.ie, who will endeavour to assist.