There is no criminal court case.

This line of questioning is not only inappropriate, it is also in bad taste. I have worked closely with Adrian O'Neill, our current ambassador to London, since he took up his post in September 2017. This has been an especially busy period in British-Irish relations, which has seen the UK leave the EU and enter into a new post-Brexit relationship with the latter and Ireland. In this period, the ambassador, Mr. O'Neill supported the 17 in-person visits I have made to Great Britain. During these visits, the ambassador…

While the Deputy is trying to use this floor to damage people's reputations, I will say that we are lucky to have someone of the calibre and experience of Martin Fraser to take over as ambassador in London. His appointment was approved by Cabinet in the appropriate way along with the appointments of other ambassadors that day. We need experienced people who already have connections and relationships within the British system. We have serious issues to resolve with the British Government in the months and, potential…

That is exactly what you are doing.

I would expect an Opposition Member of the Deputy's experience to take some time to understand how ambassadors are appointed, how they are recommended and the process whereby recommendations come to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, predominantly from the Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and then have to go to Government for approval in the normal way. That is what happened here. As I said, there is an assessment as to suitability for certain roles. The way in which Ireland appoints ambassado…

We are now appointing perhaps the most experienced civil servant in Ireland in recent years to perhaps the most important position in terms of international relations and diplomacy. He is more than qualified for that job.

The Passport Office continues to outperform its previously busiest year, 2019, by more than 20%. More than 623,000 passports have been issued to date in 2022. This is 105,000 more passports than were issued at this point of the last most busy year which was 2019. The processing time for first-time applications is now 25 working days, down from 40 working days in March. In the space of three months, processing time for first-time applications has been reduced by almost 40%. This is a substantial reduction in process…

I am not saying that there are not cases every week and every day where interventions are needed in order to make sure that the public gets the service it expects. What I am saying is that over the past number of weeks we have issued an average of around 6,000 passports per day, which is in the region of 30% more than we have ever done. When I say that we are recruiting staff, we lose staff and gain staff like every large operation does, so we have to have ongoing recruitment. We have double the number of staff now…

That is the average wait time.

When applicants have to send in extra information, which sometimes happens, that does delay the process. In those cases, we try to have a turnaround time of 15 working days after that. The clock does not go back to the start. We try to have a faster turnaround time. This is all about trying to deliver a better service to the public. We also have to get better at communicating with the public so that fewer errors are made on applications. It is our job to do that. I am not blaming the public; I am trying to get a be…

Passport applications from all citizens across the island of Ireland or abroad are distributed for processing at the three Passport Office locations on the basis of the type of application rather than the place of residence of the applicant. More than 90% of all passport applications, including first-time applications, are now being made through Passport Online. The passport service is committed to continuing to offer a range of application channels, including an off-line service for citizens who are not eligible o…

I take the Deputy's point. We are trying to move the entire system online so that people can interact with the Passport Office from their homes, either through the webchat function or by contacting an efficiently run call centre that answers their calls. That call centre has been under extraordinary pressure in recent months. We have had to add significantly to its size, and that is happening. We have done that efficiently. Rather than going through a long recruitment process, which takes time, we have instead link…

We are changing our software system. It will not be concluded until next year but, when we do that, we will have more options, such as potentially working with networks such as the An Post network or social welfare offices, for example. That would broaden the service geographically in terms of where people can apply for passports and so on. The fact is that passports are printed in Dublin. When I was Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, people told me that if we moved the whole farm payments online, many …

We have been in contact with our French counterparts on this issue and got assurances from them that there will not be any French vessels in the Irish exclusive economic zone, EEZ, during these exercises. It is important to differentiate between Irish territorial waters and the Irish EEZ, which involves international waters for which Ireland is responsible. They are different things. Ireland's territorial waters extend up to 12 nautical miles from our shore. Ireland exercises sovereignty within our territorial seas…

It is not common but it happens. What happened here was not unusual. The Irish Aviation Authority was informed of the exercises via standard procedures and the Department of Transport has issued a marine notice to this effect. As a close partner, however, the Government has remained in close contact with French authorities and will continue to do so in the coming period. I compliment the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation. Its involvement in terms of being highly vocal in raising the concerns of fishe…

The answer to the Deputy's last question is that it is a matter for France. My job is to be well informed in regard to what is happening within our EEZ and our territorial waters. It really is a matter for France in terms of its own security exercises and so on outside of that. Military exercises or manoeuvres are traditionally recognised as being a part of the freedom of the high seas, as captured under Article 87 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS. These rights are transcribed directly…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 99, 101, 104, 107 and 114 together. As there are several questions grouped together, I hope the Acting Chairman will give me some extra time to answer. The passport service is continually working to deliver enhanced customer experience and service delivery to our citizens. As we all know, it has been under a lot of pressure this year. It is experiencing an unprecedented volume of demand for passports. This is as a direct result of pent-up demand for travel after two years of pandemi…

I thank Deputies for their co-operation on passports. I know the issue has put a lot of pressure on the constituency offices of all parties. A lot of applications from Northern Ireland come through the offices of Sinn Féin Deputies, if there is a problem. Likewise, there is a perception among the public that if they contact the constituency office of a Government party member, perhaps they are likely to get to the Minister faster or whatever. There is a lot of pressure on political offices in regard to passports. T…

I understand those arguments. Every city, town and county would like to have the convenience of being able to go to pick up emergency passports at short notice locally. My job, however, is to try to deliver 130,000, 150,000 or 160,000 passports a month and to do so in an efficient way whereby I can stand over the delivery times within which we say we will deliver and to get more than 90% of our passports delivered within those timelines. For the other 10%, 5%, 2% or 3%, whatever the figure is, where there are issue…

At the moment we are not. I have not ruled it out, as I have said, but at the moment we are trying to prioritise turnaround times and a response to the public demand where the pressure points are most acute. I am not ruling out a passport office in the North but it is not first on the priority list for now.