Passport Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21
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Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (SF), Cork South-Central

That gives the logic itself, if the Minister is making the case for having physical offices at all, then the same case could be made in terms of the North whether Belfast or somewhere else.
Since the Good Friday Agreement, one of the primary and practical ways in which people who identify as Irish in the North vindicate that right and identity is to apply for an Irish passport. It is the case that increasing numbers of people apply for an Irish passport. It makes sense for people to be able to access this. It is welcome that a huge percentage of applications are online. It is efficient and it is an excellent service. I pay tribute to the staff in the office. We hear excellent reports about people applying and their passport nearly appearing the next day but it would make sense to have an office in the North. It does not necessarily have to be the case that they are only dealing with the counter stuff. If we have an office and the staff are in a position to deal with the counter stuff, that does not mean they could not do some of the back office stuff as well. We talk about the increase in foreign birth registration cases. Perhaps a team in Belfast could take some of that workload. Could some of that work be redistributed to a different office? There are various other aspects of renewing and advancing the service. I ask the Minister to give it further consideration.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-21