I am glad that the Deputy has asked this question because it is good to put this issue on the record. My Department is responsible for citizenship by descent through the Foreign Births Register under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, as amended. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the processing time for foreign birth registrations, FBR, applications stood at 18 months due to an unprecedented surge in applications as a result of Brexit and the necessarily rigorous processing that applies to citizenship ap…

The Deputy is correct to keep raising this issue. As of this week, we have opened the Passport Office for people to get appointments for emergency passports for the first time in many months. People can apply for appointments online now to get a rapid turnaround of a passport and so on. It is only in recent weeks that we have had full staffing levels back in the Passport Office. I have visited the office. The staff are doing incredible work, given the pressure they are under in processing emergency passports and pa…

As I stated, when there are urgent cases that need to be addressed, we deal with them. There is a process to deal with them and we have dealt with 4,500 of them so far this year. If there are cases involving people in war zones or children who are stateless because they do not have a passport, there is a mechanism to deal with those cases. Let us be clear regarding what is available to people if there are urgent cases that need to be resolved. We will resolve such cases. As regards the many non-urgent FBR applicati…

The Deputy will be aware that the operations of the Passport Office were severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, as were many other government services. Emergency passport services were maintained during the pandemic. That required staff to be on site to process and issue passports. As a result of well-implemented safety protocols, 67,000 passport books and cards were issued between January and May of this year. Since the beginning of the year, the passport service has issued almost 450,000 passports and passp…

The passport service is currently working closely with the human resources division of the Department and the Public Appointments Service on an ongoing basis to recruit additional staff to meet the current and forecast demands for passports. Additional staff have been assigned to the Passport Office sites on Mount Street and in Tallaght, with plans to assign additional staffing to the Passport Office locations in Balbriggan and Cork in the coming weeks. The Public Appointments Service has assigned temporary clerica…

The Deputy is correct that people are right to expect a quality service within a reasonable timescale and to expect to be able to get updates and information when they need them. There is a great deal of information online. There is also, effectively, a call centre which is working to update people on passports. I mentioned earlier that over 80,000 people have been in contact with the passport service this year. My job is to ensure that we resource those services. We are planning for a significant increase in deman…

Ireland follows developments in the Pacific closely, including the recent trilateral security deal known as AUKUS. I am also aware of comments made by other regional actors about the deal. The AUKUS announcement identified that the first major initiative will be to develop a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia. It will be important to ensure that no proliferation risk or unhelpful precedents arise from the agreement. I welcome the statement by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency…

In truth, I do not believe we could succeed, even if we tried, in getting a specific emergency Security Council meeting on this issue. I do not believe the permanent member states would accept that and one must get consensus before one can get an emergency meeting on anything. It is important to be upfront about that. This is an issue Ireland raised at the start of this week when it chaired a meeting to recognise the 25th anniversary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. One of the key calling cards for Ire…

I welcome the question on this and I would be happy to have a more detailed discussion, if that is what Members would like. Ireland has actively contributed to the development of the EU's new Indo-Pacific strategy, which was announced on the same day that this pact was announced. That is a source of real frustration for the EU because we did not even know that this pact was going to be announced in the first place. One EU member state, France, has been impacted significantly by this in respect of what it had though…

I am glad to answer this question. I have asked my Department to undertake a review of the role and appointment of special envoys, given the public commentary and debate on this issue in recent weeks. It is anticipated that the review will be completed by mid-October because I have asked that it be a priority. The recommendations of that review will inform policy regarding any future special envoy appointments by Government. No consideration will be given to appointing any special envoys in any policy area until th…

I also believe it is worthwhile, which is why I was looking to create the position and appoint somebody suitable to it. Many other countries are doing this and they have been doing so for quite some time. We were simply looking at what other countries were doing, trying to get value for money and trying to put skilled people into positions where they could advocate internationally from an Irish perspective. That is what special envoys do. They are not normal employees of the Department per se because they are norma…

Ireland has been a template for many of other countries to follow in how attitudes towards minority groups here have changed, particularly the LGBTQ+ community and the way in which we had a public conversation and citizen's assembly on the issue. We passed a referendum to change the status of same-sex marriage and so on. These are things a lot of other countries have taken a lead from. Ireland campaigns internationally in this space and it wants to protect minorities that are vulnerable and blatantly discriminated …

The Russian Federation held state Duma, regional and local elections from 17 September to 19 September. On 24 September, the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation declared that the United Russia party, which supports President Vladimir Putin, had retained its parliamentary majority in the state Duma. I regret that independent and impartial election monitoring was not facilitated by the Russian Government to a satisfactory extent. The decision to restrict severely the size and format of an internatio…

We do, but being listened to is a different question. We do have to have a relationship with Russia, but we also have to be blunt and consistent in our message, and that message needs to be collective within the EU. It is no secret that Russia looks to develop bilateral relationships with individual EU member states. We need to ensure a collective approach from the EU towards developing a more constructive relationship with Russia on the basis of key principles that we have outlined and reaffirmed many times. It is…

Regarding the Apple and Google issue, before polling began, Apple and Google removed jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's smart voting app from the iOS and Android stores, respectively. Ireland has no special sight of or role in adjudicating on the decisions of multinational companies in different jurisdictions. I do not have access to all the information and considerations which led Apple and Google to make the decisions they did. I am sure, however, that the well-being and safety of their local staff…

I will take your guidance, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, as to how you want me to deal with these questions, but I am apparently being asked to take Questions Nos. 8, 9, 12, 16, 19, 29, 37, 46, 49, 53, 61, 66, 77 and 81 all together.

They are, but they are all asking for different numbers, which maybe I will try to send to the individual Deputies.

Well, on the basis of all these questions, we will be here until 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Let me give the House the answer I have here and I will follow up with individual Deputies if I need to do so to give more information. I welcome the opportunity to update the Deputies on the continued scaling up of operations by the passport service. The passport service maintained operations through the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the fact the processing of passports requires physical attendance on site to deliver this service. As a result of well-implemented safety protocols, 67,000 passport books and cards were …

I will finish shortly. The next major element of the reform programme is to replace the core technology underpinning the passport service. The current system was launched in 2004 and will be replaced by a more modern, integrated system. Detailed design and implementation will begin in the coming months and it is expected to be operational by the end of 2023.