Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 January 2022
212. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if additional staff will be recruited to the passport office given the lengthy delays incurred processing passport applications (details supplied). [4165/22]
View answerAdequate staffing of the Passport Service to respond to demand is a priority for my Department and is an issue that is kept under constant review.
My Department is actively working with the Public Appointments Service on an ongoing basis to recruit and assign additional staff at all grades to meet the current and forecasted high demand for passports in 2022.
Additional permanent and temporary officers are continuously being assigned to the Passport Service at its sites in Dublin and Cork. I expect that by the end of this month, staffing numbers will be at approximately 775. This is a 70% increase on June of last year. Significant numbers of staff will continue to be assigned to the Passport Service throughout February and into March.
The Irish Passport was recently ranked 5th in the Henley Global Passport Index as it provides our citizens with visa free access to 187 countries. In order to protect the integrity and security of the Irish passport, Passport Service staff continued to work on-site over the past challenging two years to deliver this essential service to our citizens. Despite pandemic-related disruptions, the Passport Service issued over 634,000 passports in 2021.
I am confident that the additional staff that have been assigned and will continue to be recruited over the coming weeks will have a positive impact on processing times, particularly for first time passport applications.
I am aware that there is pent-up demand for passports due to the challenges with international travel over the past two years. I urge citizens to check the validity of their passports before booking travel and to ensure that they apply online in plenty of time. The processing of an online application is consistently up to four times faster than the processing time of a paper application.
