Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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18. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of passports that were issued in each week of September and October 2023, in tabular form. [48851/23]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Passport Service has issued over 868,000 passports to date this year and is meeting all of its target turnaround times.

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. Over 90% of all passport applications, including first time applications, are now being made through Passport Online which is now available to 99.9% of all applicants across the world

Currently, 100% of calls to the Customer Service Hub are being answered and customers can easily access the information they need through the Hub. The Customer Service Hub responds to an average of 10,000 queries per week.

The Passport Service was recently placed 18th out of 150 public-facing organisations in a survey conducted by the Customer Experience (CX) group. This ranking recognised the Passport Service as the best customer service brand in the public sector.

The Passport Service continues to be in an excellent position to meet the demand forecast for the remainder of this year. I would ask the Deputy to encourage his constituents to apply online for the quickest, cheapest and most efficient service.

The number of passports issued by the Passport Service in September and October by week is outlined in tabular form below.

** denotes partial week.