DISRUPTION:THE PASSPORT Office on Dublin's Molesworth Street was closed to the public yesterday after extensive floods caused by a burst pipe.
Staff reporting for work in the morning discovered the flooding. The office will stay shut today, as is normal for St Patrick’s Day, but it was unclear yesterday whether it would reopen tomorrow.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said it was awaiting advice from the OPW on reopening the public office.
He said the closure of the public office would not cause major disruption, as most passports were processed in Balbriggan. The Passport Office in Cork was also processing applications, he said.
People who expected to collect passports from Molesworth Street yesterday were redirected to Hainault House, at 69-71 St Stephen’s Green. The spokesman said this advice would apply tomorrow if the Passport Office was still shut.
He said any citizen who needed a passport “on a genuine emergency basis” should report to Iveagh House, 80 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin. He said those awaiting passports should check the department’s dfa.ie website and the media for updates.
The closure follows disruption to passport services due to industrial action. Staff protesting over public sector pay cuts withdrew from public counters on a number of occasions in recent weeks.
Fine Gael spokesman on foreign affairs Billy Timmins said the industrial action at the office had been “increasingly frustrating” for hundreds of people. “Today’s flooding emergency has added to the chaos and the contingency measures put in place by the Department of Foreign Affairs are simply not good enough,” he said.
