Brian Stanley
Question:71. Deputy Brian Stanley asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if the staffing levels dealing with passports has increased in the past two years to deal with the high demand. [27896/18]
View answerWednesday, 27 June 2018
Questions (71)
Written answers
In 2017 the Passport Service issued over 780,000 passports. This represents an increase of over 6% compared to 2016 when over 730,000 passports were issued. Over 500,000 passport applications have been received by the Passport Service so far this year. Applications received in the first 5 months of this year have increased by over 8% compared with the same time period last year. The Passport Service closely monitors the volume of applications on an ongoing basis to ensure that resources are available to meet demand. Among the measures taken by the Passport Service to facilitate the management of overall demand and seasonal applications increases are: the recruitment of additional staff; targeted overtime; reorganization of production processes and administrative arrangements and the continuous implementation of service improvements through the Passport Reform Programme.
With particular reference to staff, additional staff have been employed by the Passport Service both on a permanent basis to manage overall demand and on a temporary basis to manage seasonal demand.
The number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff permanently employed by my Department and assigned to the Passport Service stood at 322 at the beginning of the year. This compares to 301 FTE staff assigned to the Passport Service at the same point last year and 268 at the same point in 2016. This year, since these figures were released, over 30 additional permanent staff have started with the Passport Service.
The Passport Service received sanction this year for 220 Temporary Clerical Officers (TCOs) for appointment to the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork. These TCOs are working together with permanent staff to process passport applications and to deal with the high number of enquiries being made through the Passport Service’s various customer service channels.