Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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89. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade his plans to increase staffing and resources of the passport office to ease processing delays; his views on the opening of a new passport office; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42452/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Passport Service is successfully meeting high demand for passports and is very well staffed to meet the current level of demand. To date this year, the Passport Service has issued over 615,000 passport books and cards. The Customer Service Hub is responding to almost 12,000 phone and webchat queries per week.

Virtually all complete passport applications are being processed within or well before advertised turnaround times. The majority of adult online renewal applications issuing within two working days and there are no backlogs.

Currently, the Passport Service employs a total of 846 staff, which represents 96% of the approved staffing target for this year. My Department engages in comprehensive workforce planning and workload management processes, based on forecasted demand for passports. Due to my Department’s vigilant monitoring of customer demand and proactive management of resources, the Passport Service is in an excellent position to meet forecasted demand for 2025.

Regarding the Deputy's query on opening another passport office, there are currently no plans to open an additional office.

The Passport Online service offers citizens the ability to apply online for their passport 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This award-winning service has allowed for the centralisation of passport processing and has resulted in greater efficiencies for our citizens and for the Passport Service. Passport Online is a user-friendly, efficient service used by over 93% of all passport applicants and is available to 99.9% of all applicants globally.

Passport Service records show that just 1.6% of all passport applicants availed of the Urgent Appointment service in Dublin and in Cork last year. Taking into account the significant cost of locating and running an additional passport office, a business case cannot currently be made for establishing an additional passport office on the island of Ireland.

I am satisfied that the current Passport Online service and production capacity meets the needs of passport applicants. The Passport Service will continue to consider ways in which to enhance this essential citizen service.

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. As a matter of best practice, applicants should check the validity of their passport before booking travel.