Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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211. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the average turnaround time for a passport renewal, by paper and online; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19942/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Passport Service issued over one million passports in 2024. To date in 2025, the Passport Service has issued over 365,000 passports.

2025 is expected to be another busy year for the Passport Service and my Department is in an excellent position to meet the demand forecasted for the busy summer season.

I am pleased to say that the Passport Service is successfully meeting high demand for passports. All passport applications are being issued at, or ahead of, their target turnaround time and there are no backlogs.

With regard to the Deputy's question, the table below provides the advertised turnaround times as well as the monthly average turnaround times for first-time and renewal passports, by paper and online, in March 2025:

I would ask the Deputy to encourage his constituents to apply for their passports through Passport Online, as the quickest, easiest and most cost effective way to apply for a passport. The Passport Online service allows citizens to apply online for their passport 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Passport Online is an award-winning, user-friendly, efficient service that consistently offers processing times up to four times faster than paper-based passport renewal applications. Passport Online is available to 99.9% of all applicants globally.