asked the Minister for External Affairs if he will authorise our High Commissioner in London to issue passports that are required in a hurry, and whether he will also provide him with the necessary forms and stamp.
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. (ORAL ANSWERS.) - ISSUING OF PASSPORTS.
The number of applications for passports made to the High Commissioner has so far not been found sufficient to justify the setting up of special machinery in London to deal with them. A passport cannot be issued until the identity and bona fides of the applicant have been satisfactorily established. There would consequently, as a general rule, be a greater delay in the issue of passports in London than in Dublin. For that reason it is very desirable that people who propose to travel on the Continent should provide themselves with passports before leaving Ireland.
Does it not strike the Minister that some of our citizens who may find themselves in London and who wish to take a short holiday abroad, while they could get passports from the British Government within twelve hours, would have to wait for four days to get them from Dublin? What is the sense of any inhabitant of the Saorstát having to pay the British Government fees on a passport which he can get from them within twelve hours and which, under present conditions, he cannot get from our own representative? We have fine offices and a most courteous staff in London; they do every thing to help us when we apply to them, but the only thing that can be done is for them to identify us to the British Government, which at once issues the passports, and we then have the pleasure of paying the British Government, and instead of having a passport beginning with: "We, Timothy Healy," we get one beginning: "We, Austin Chamberlain."
An Irish citizen applying in London for a passport can only be granted it when we have been satisfied as to his identity and bona fides. It may happen in the case of a man such as the Deputy that he might get it in twelve hours, but certainly, in the case of ordinary human beings, it would take longer.