Passport Services Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-11 ============================================================ Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare I am glad of the opportunity to address the House on the topic of passports which has been raised by my good friend Senator Crowe. I thank him for raising this issue. It is a really important issue of which I am very aware from a constituency perspective, as are most Members of this House. The passport service is currently experiencing a high level of demand for passports as citizens prepare for upcoming summer travel. Thanks to the operational and staffing plans of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the passport service is successfully responding to this demand and has issued over 440,000 passports to date this year. Internationally, the Irish passport has a strong reputation and the passport service takes seriously its responsibility to protect the integrity of the Irish passport and the issuing process. Our passport ranks fourth in the Henley global passport index as it provides citizens visa-free access to 186 countries. Since the introduction of passport online in 2017, adults renewing their passports are not required to submit a witnessed identity form. Online child renewal applications can be witnessed by members of many professions, including schoolteachers, doctors, elected representatives and gardaí. Only first-time adult and child passport application forms for applicants resident in Ireland are required to be witnessed by a member of An Garda Síochána. There is a really good reason for that. We have seen efforts by others for nefarious reasons to attempt to gain an Irish passport illegally. The witnessing of these application forms is a vital element of the identity verification process as it provides initial assurance to the passport service that the person in the photograph is the same person presenting to submit the form. With applications for a minor, the witnessing of this form provides evidence that guardians have given consent for a passport to be issued to the child. To protect the rights of guardians and children, it is important that forms are correctly completed. In December 2025, the passport service launched a new passport assist service to support citizens who do not wish to use passport online channels and assist them to make a paper passport application. When developing passport assist, the passport service engaged extensively with An Garda Síochána and provided training resources on correctly witnessing forms. Since its launch, the proportion of applications requiring Garda witnessing has decreased from 17% to 13%. When a garda does witness an application, it is the responsibility of the witnessing garda to ensure that the signature is correctly recorded in the station logbook in order that, when the passport service calls, the signature can be verified. In these cases, the passport service calls the relevant station to confirm that the garda recorded the form in the logbook. The passport service is not required to directly speak to the witnessing garda. Passport service staff call the Garda station up to three times to verify the signature. Passport applications are checked by experienced entitlement officers who endeavour to maintain up-to-date records of the opening hours of Garda stations. Where the passport service cannot reach the Garda station after three attempts, the relevant superintendent’s office can be contacted to verify the details. If the passport service is unable to verify the witness after these steps have been taken, a new witnessed form will be requested from the applicant. The passport service is continuously looking at ways to make the application process easier for applicants, including the enhancement of digital services, and would welcome the digitisation of the records maintained by An Garda Síochána when witnessing applications. There is a general update of passport service policies under way in the context of the ongoing passport reform programme. This reform programme focuses on the future of service delivery by implementing projects that enhance the customer experience, while maintaining the integrity of the Irish passport. I thank the Senator for his question. I am well aware of the issue. I encourage him and others in this House and elsewhere to encourage those seeking a passport and filling out the application to go to a main Garda station. There is a multiplicity of Garda stations in my constituency which only open for a number of hours of the day and there is no way in the wide world that when the Passport Office is ringing at 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock, or maybe later or even at weekends, there will be somebody there to answer. I encourage people who find themselves with a requirement to witness the application, that is, a first-time application or one that has been expired for more than five years, to go to the main Garda station in the county. That is a way to resolve the problem. However, it does not take from the very important issue the Senator has raised, which is somebody who missed a holiday who at some point had a passport that had gone out of date. Between Covid and various other things, people quite frankly have not had use for a passport. Particularly within the common travel area where Aer Lingus prior to this did not require a passport to go to the UK, and many people who did not have a passport chose to travel there with a driving licence, there is now an even greater demand. The word has to go out that people should go to a main Garda station if they are outside the normal repeat situation. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-11