Passport Service says 'no backlog' despite 182,000 applicants waiting
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said that of the 104,000 passport applications received more than one month ago, '37% of those applications are incomplete and require further action by the applicant'. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
There are currently 182,000 applications being processed by the Passport Service, but the Department of Foreign Affairs insists this "does not represent a backlog”.
About 11,000 were registered more than six months ago and, while 70% of these applicants need to submit further documents to progress their application, it means more than 3,000 people who have submitted all these documents have been waiting since at least September for their passport.
The department has sought to boost the number of staff at the Passport Service in order to deal with the surge in applications in 2022 after two years of living with Covid-19.
As has been seen in Dublin Airport in recent days, the demand for foreign travel has increased sharply since the periods living under travel restrictions and, combined with staff shortages, this has led to long delays in getting through security at the airport.
Holidaymakers have been warned the security bottlenecks, which are leading to delays of many hours, are set to continue and are “going to get worse”.
Figures from the CSO show departures from Ireland went up 40% from January to February, with more than 785,000 leaving the country last month.
Overseas travel increased in February 2022https://t.co/evRDcdWvld #CSOIreland #Ireland #Tourism #Travel #Holidays #LoveIreland #OverseasTravel #AirAndSeaTravel pic.twitter.com/dHnbXMnUFm
— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) March 28, 2022
At the same time, some people are waiting significant periods of time to have their passport application progressed.
In response to a parliamentary question, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the number of applications in the passport system received more than one month ago is almost 104,000.
“However, 37% of those applications are incomplete and require further action by the applicant,” he said.
Mr Coveney said the Passport Service “simply cannot progress these applications” until all the necessary documents are received.
He also said the 182,000 applications currently in the system do not represent a backlog as “these applications are all being processed in the usual way”, with a continuous dispatch of complete passports happening every day.
The current turnaround times are 10 working days for simple adult renewals and 15 working days for complex or child online renewals. However, it is also taking 35 working days for first-time applications on Passport Online and eight weeks for An Post’s mail-in Passport Express service.
So far this year, more than 264,000 passports have been issued.
Mr Coveney said a number of efforts are under way to improve the turnaround and processing times in the Passport Service.
This includes a new document management system put in place earlier this month.
“Once the additional documents are received, they are prioritised and where applications are complete can now be processed in three weeks," he said. "This significantly reduces the processing time, particularly for first-time applicants.”
It is hoped the number of staff within the Passport Service will reach 900 over the coming months, which would be a doubling of workers since last summer.
Mr Coveney also advised anyone considering travelling overseas this year, particularly families with young children, to check the validity of their passports before booking travel and to apply for their passports in plenty of time.
