The position is that the appropriate statutory fee has to be paid on each occasion when a passport is sought. The relevant fees are set out in SI 82 Diplomatic and Consular Fees (Amendment) Regulations 2004. There is no provision in these regulations for the issue of replacement passports free of charge.
The situation in question has arisen because of a change in US requirements. From 26 October 2004, all Irish passport holders visiting the United States require an individual machine-readable passport to avail of the US visa waiver programme. Holders of hand-written passports have the option of either replacing their existing passport with a machine readable one, including, as indicated above, paying the appropriate fee, or obtaining a visa, in advance, from their nearest US diplomatic or consular mission. These new requirements apply to all visa waiver countries, including Ireland.
My Department, on being informed of this new requirement, sought to publicise it so that holders of Irish passports that are not machine-written would be able to obtain new machine-readable passports in good time if they envisaged travelling to the US, or, alternatively, to obtain visas. An arrangement was also put in place last year to produce machine-readable passports in Dublin for applicants abroad who requested such a passport, although this would not have benefited the person in question given that his passport was issued in 2002.
My Department is currently developing a new passport system and when this is fully operational, all Irish passports, whether issued at home or abroad, will be machine-written. In the meantime, I am afraid that, because of the change in US requirements, the Department is not in a position to be of assistance regarding the person's request other than in the normal way, to facilitate the issuing of a new passport to him.
