{"id":26331,"date":"2022-05-25T08:42:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T12:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=26331"},"modified":"2022-05-25T11:37:13","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T15:37:13","slug":"staff-to-double-at-passport-office-to-deal-with-increased-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=26331","title":{"rendered":"Staff To Double At Passport Office To Deal With Increased Demand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said 900 people would be working in the Passport Office this summer (PA Images)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said the huge demand for passports as people begin to travel abroad again has led to \u201cpressure on the system\u201d, particularly for first-time passport applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking at Iveagh House in Dublin on Tuesday, Mr Coveney said: \u201cBecause there are so many people applying for both renewals and new passports at the moment, it is putting some pressure on the system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that 900 people would be working in the Passport Office this summer \u2013 double the 460 staff working in it last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the Passport Office was essentially issuing 5,000 passports a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo far this year, we\u2019ve issued half a million passports, which is 80 per cent of where we were in the whole of last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast month, there was 170,000 passports issued, which is considerably more than ever before in history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to anecdotal reports of people not being able to get through to officials to ask about their passport application, Mr Coveney said that additional staff are being allocated to customer services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would be hopeful people will see a difference this week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that delays were mostly among people applying for first-time passports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people are renewing their passports, they will get their passport renewed within 10 days, but actually 43% of those applications get a renewal within 48 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst-time passports do take longer, they take about 30 days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Coveney added that almost half of those applying for first-time passports had problems in how they had filled out their application form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to get better at communicating what the public need to do so that we can reduce the error rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people haven\u2019t checked their passports because they haven\u2019t been travelling for the last few years because of Covid,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has effectively dramatically increased. This year, we\u2019ll probably deal with 1.4 million passports. The highest number ever before this year was just over 900,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re talking about in the space of one year increasing passport applications by about 50 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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