The Passport Service is to increase staff numbers by almost 20 per cent this year to cope with a surge in demand.
Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday night, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said there were now 732 staff working in the service, the largest ever number employed.
However, he noted that passport applications have more than trebled over the last month and said 2023 will be another busy year for the service, with 61,000 passports issued so far this year.
He said passport applications have increased from an average of 1,400 per day in December to almost 5,000 per day in recent weeks.
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A ministerial brief prepared for Mr Martin when he took over as Minister for Foreign Affairs in December 2022 noted the plans.
“The management board recently gave sanction for additional assignment of staff to the Passport Service to bring staffing numbers up to a peak of 874 in 2023,” it said.
“This is the forecasted number of staff required to meet demands associated with the projected 1.1 million passport applications particularly in the customer service hub.
“Currently, 40 per cent of clerical officers are on temporary contracts. The department is planning to increase core permanent staff members in 2023 in order to increase resilience within the Passport Service and to optimally respond to the seasonal surges in demand.”
It said this move would result in core staffing numbers increasing by 88 to just over 600.
It said just under 1.1 million passports were issued in 2022, which was an increase of 17 per cent on the previous busiest year when 935,000 passports were issued in 2019. The same number of passports are anticipated for 2023.
“This unprecedented demand followed significant disruptions to the service during the first year of the pandemic,” the briefing said. “The Passport Service began to scale up towards normal operations from May 2021.”
The briefing said recruitment and retention of staff “has been an ongoing challenge” as the Department continues to work in “highly competitive labour markets”.
It said the Department ran 15 recruitment and promotion campaigns in 2021 and 2022 to fill vacancies in the Passport Service and works closely with the Public Appointments Service to secure new staff.
Sinn Féin TD John Brady said in the Dáil on Tuesday that 2022 had been “an unmitigated disaster” when it came to the handling and the issuing of passports with “many families unfortunately missing out on their holidays due to chronic delays”.
Over €1 million was spent on overtime at the State’s three passport offices last year, more than double the amount in 2019.
