Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 30 September 2021
11. Deputy Michael Ring asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of staff working in the Passport Office on a monthly basis from January 2020 to 31 August 2021; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47039/21]
View answerI will put two brief questions to the Minister. First, will he take staff from other Departments and put them into the Passport Office to try to deal with the emergency? Second, and seriously, is it not time that the Department considered putting a passport office in the west? If there is a problem, it is not fair that someone from Galway, Mayo or Belmullet has to go to Dublin to resolve it. Although many passports are being processed online, there are still many that are not. This matter has been raised with me and every Member of the House. That is why the Minister has received so many questions about it today. People are upset.
I know that people are frustrated because, in the absence of international travel for nearly 18 months, many are now checking and realising that their passports are out of date, but they want to plan their holidays. We understand what is contributing to the dramatic increase in demand, which will continue right the way through next year. We are taking on more people, but access to more people has not been the primary problem. The challenge has been in being able to get people into the office safely and expanding the physical footprint of a secure passport office that I can stand over in terms of its security operation. Both of these matters are being addressed. I have walked through the new physical footprint of the Passport Office, which is being fitted out at the moment to plan for next year and the extra people that we will take on and who will be factored into our Estimate.
I cannot give the Deputy an answer as to whether we will open an office in the west. We want to get our existing office infrastructure open. We have to open in Cork and we have only just opened the office in Dublin for emergency passport delivery. If we are going to go beyond that, it has to come from a process of assessment within the Department, but I do not have a closed mind about the idea.
I thank the Minister for his answer. I acknowledge that the staff of the Passport Office are working under difficult conditions, but this is an essential service. I warned the Department three months ago that this problem would arise and it has now happened. There has been a problem every summer. I would like to see it not happening next year and the office being given the requisite number of staff to process passports. Many people did not have holidays this year because they could not get a document to which they were entitled.
An awful lot of people were accommodated at the last minute as well. I know, because we have been working night and day trying to deal with emergency passports for people throughout the summer. For some of the summer months, we issued up to 100,000 passports per month. The people who do not get resolved through the system go to Deputies' offices and, therefore, many Deputies hear about lots of problems and do not see the benefits of a system that is getting back up on its feet with extra resources and new systems in place to be more efficient. However, I accept that there is work to do. I do not want to pretend that all the problems with the Passport Office have been solved. They have not been. We also need to focus as a priority on getting foreign birth registries working as they should be.
Passport applications take time. We cannot move in a direction of essentially giving a message to the public that everyone can get a passport at the last minute if he or she does not renew earlier.
That is not fair. They had them in on time. They have had them in for 40 days.
For the people who have them in on time, we need to have a system that delivers on time and is predictable, and that people can track. We are working on the delivery of that system.
The system has to be fair.
We are over time.
