John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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65. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade his plans to make changes to the current passport application process for passports that are expired more than five years whereby they are treated as a first-time application and not a renewal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41958/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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All passport applications are subject to the terms of the Passports Act, 2008 (“the Act”). The Act provides a legal basis for the various policies and practices that are applied by the Passport Service in the issuing of passports.

To protect the integrity of the Irish passport, when processing a first time application the Passport Service must validate the identity of the applicant and confirm their entitlement to Irish citizenship. Section 8 of the Act provides for the processing of personal data by the Passport Service as required for the issuance of passports.

To comply with its obligations under data protection legislation, the Department will hold data that has been collected for the purposes of processing an application, only as long as there is a business need to do so, in line with the purposes for which the data was collected.

The Passport Service's Data Privacy Notice provides for data to be held by the Passport Service for 15 years after the date of issuance i.e. the validity of an adult's passport plus five years. After this time, the data is due for destruction and will be destroyed in line with internal guidelines and guidelines for destruction received from the National Archives. A minimum amount of personal data can be held beyond this period for the purpose of fraud prevention in order to maintain the integrity of the Passport Service system.

Therefore, if a renewal application is made more than 15 years after the issuance of a passport, the passport application is treated as a first time application and the applicant is requested to submit relevant supporting documentation. Under Section 7 of the Passports Act, the Passport Service may require the applicant to produce such documents as are considered necessary for the purposes of issuing a passport. In the case of applicants who are applying after more than 15 years since the issuance of their last passport, it is also possible that documentary requirements may have changed since the issuance of their last passport.