Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 3 February 2022
266. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of online renewal and first-time adult and child passport applications that were issued on the projected issue date, earlier than the projected issue date, later than the projected issue date or rejected in 2021, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5542/22]
View answerThe information requested by the Deputy is set out in tabular form below.
There are several factors that will help to clarify the figures of passports issued before, on or after the issue-by date in 2021.
Passport Service operations were severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, as were many Government services. Between January 2021 and May 2021, many Passport Service staff members were redeployed to assist with the national response to Covid-19 in essential public service roles, such as assisting the Department of Social Protection in the processing of Covid-19 related benefits, providing consular assistance to Irish citizens overseas and assisting the Public Appointments Services. During this period, emergency passport services were maintained and Passport Service staff assisted citizens who required passports for a range of emergency and urgent personal, business or legal reasons or who had compelling humanitarian needs to travel. Taking account of Covid-19 protocols in place at that time, 67,000 passports were issued during that period.
At the end of the period of Level 5 restrictions and in the context of the Government’s “Covid-19 Resilience and Recovery 2021”, I advised the Government of my decision to categorise the Passport Service as an essential service and to scale up operations. Passport Service operations began scaling up on 4 May 2021. At this point, notwithstanding the excellent efforts of the Passport Service staff, a Covid related backlog of 89,000 passport applications had developed as customers continued to apply for non-urgent passports while services were disrupted. The figures in the table below show that a high number of applications were processed beyond the issue-by date. However, a significant proportion of these were received during the first four months of 2021 and could not be processed during Level 5 restrictions.
The online Passport Tracker provides applicants with an indication of how their application is progressing through the system and gives an estimated issue date based on the current average application processing time. Given that this is an indication only of the estimated issue date based on current averages, this projected issue date is not an intended guarantee of delivery on that date. This issue date relates to passport applications submitted to the Passport Service with required supporting documentation. When passport applicants to not provide all of the requisite documentation to the Passport Service, it takes much longer to process the application and issue a passport. Passport Service figures consistently show that 45% of applications at a point in time are incomplete and the onus is on the applicant to submit the required documents to the Service. While the Passport Service makes every effort to contact applicants in such circumstances, their experience is that many applicants take weeks and sometimes months to send in the necessary documents. Passport applications that are incomplete cannot be processed by the Passport Service. The 41,434 applications cancelled in 2021 are primarily applications where no documentation was submitted within the six month of the application being made.
|
2021 |
Issued on issue-by date |
Issued before issue-by date |
Issued after issue-by date |
|
Online Renewal Adult |
36,270 |
241,679 |
75,506 |
|
Online Renewal Child |
8,669 |
29,169 |
56,282 |
|
Online First Time Adult |
1,931 |
7,776 |
21,541 |
|
Online First Time Child |
992 |
7,918 |
18,168 |
|
Passport applications cancelled in 2021 |
41,434 |
