I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, coming in so late this evening. This issue relates to the increasing number of people contacting my office - and I have heard the same from other TDs in the past couple of weeks - regarding passport offices and not being able to get confirmation of signatures from Garda stations. It is causing huge distress for everyone involved in the process and creates an awful lot of work for everybody. I will give the Minister of State examples from a couple of constituents. One said they got onto the Passport Office on 19 April 2024 to see what was happening and the following Tuesday they received an email to say it could not get through to the Garda station to confirm the consent forms because the phone was not answered. It was a family member of a friend who was a member of the Garda who got the forms signed. He said the station phone is manned 24-7 and was surprised to hear this. This was very unfair to the individual and through no fault of their own, they were put at the bottom of the pile and expected to wait a further 20 days. Another constituent applied for a passport on 28 March 2025 and was advised by the Passport Office on 13 May there was an issue contacting the witness and the form would need to be signed again. On the same day, they went back to the Garda station in order for the consent form to be signed again and the Garda members were surprised to hear the office had difficulties making contact with them. We had an issue on both sides in this case. The last example relates to a ten-week-old baby whose passport was supposed to be issued last Friday but because the required witness was not contactable - and a landline number was provided - unfortunately, a whole new application was required. We all know the difficulties when something happens with a passport and we all get these contacts every single week. It starts in February and March when people contact us and they say, "I am heading off in the next week or so and I am desperately trying to get hold of a passport". I commend the Passport Office because in fairness to it, it really does its best to try to get issues resolved as quickly as possible. If anybody listens to this, I urge them to please do not book anything before they have their passport in their hands.

Sentiment score: 0.02

This goes on every single year but people have expectations because they look at the timelines from the Passport Office and think it is brilliant, they will have plenty of time within the timeline but unfortunately, once you get one simple issue like this, it throws the whole process into disarray and delays it for a very long time. I am very interested to hear how we can resolve this - something around digitisation or modernising the process - because it seems a little archaic in this day and age to have the Passport Office ringing up a Garda station where a garda then goes to the big book and searches to see if the signature has been put in correctly. Sometimes there is a mistake where it can be put in incorrectly, which can cause problems. I will leave it at that for the moment.

Sentiment score: 0.19

I appreciate the answer. What surprises me is the figure given of 17% of passports when, just in the past couple of weeks, I have had at least four or five people come to me. I have listened to a couple of other Deputies raising this issue as well, one from the Minister of State's own party during, I think, Questions on Policy or Legislation. It most definitely is an issue, but not with the Passport Office, because it does its due diligence and I understand that. Whenever people call the office about a passport, I hope it is not a first passport. I always know that if it is, it will be very difficult to try to resolve. Unfortunately, people sometimes do not understand until it is explained to them the importance of ensuring the veracity of the applicant and making sure this is real. Once a person gets their first passport, it then naturally follows on, so they have to get that piece right. I entirely agree that all of the checks and balances need to happen so that we ensure, as the Minister of State has said, that the Irish passport remains the number one. The Minister of State talking about the Irish passport being number one reminds me of something. About ten or 12 years ago, agents of Mossad, the Israeli security service were caught with Irish passports. This relates to the previous debate we had in relation to that country. There is something we have to look at and we have to ensure that the system works. It is a stressful time for people and we have to try to make it as easy as we possibly can for them, the Passport Office and the Garda. We have to make sure there is not a waste of time or energy. We have to try to get it digitised in some way so that the checks can be done much more quickly and more easily and we do not have the situation where, unfortunately, people like this are left struggling, ringing our offices trying to get it sorted.

Sentiment score: 0.28