TDs agree on need to speed up passport process

With summer holiday season approaching, looming passport expiration dates threaten to put a dampener on people’s holiday plans.

In fact, it is a rare issue where Fine Gael and Sinn Féin share common ground.

The famously convoluted process, which involves sending the passport away and waiting for the local garda station to give their signature, has been called out by Sinn Féin TD Paul Donnelly, who has called on the Fine Gael minister who has oversight of this process, Neale Richmond, to speed it up.

Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday, the Dublin West TD said the process is “causing a huge distress for everyone involved in the process and creates an awful lot of work for everybody.”

Donnelly said “we all know the difficulties when something happens with a passport and we all get these contacts every single week; it starts in February and March when people contact us and they say, ‘I am heading off in the next week or so and I am desperately trying to get hold of a passport’.”

He commended the Passport Office for its efforts, noting “in fairness to it, it really does its best to try to get issues resolved as quickly as possible.”

He urged people not to book a holiday “before they have their passport in their hands,” and asked Minister Richmond to look into speeding up the passport renewal process.

“It seems a little archaic in this day and age to have the Passport Office ringing up a Garda station where a garda then goes to the big book and searches to see if the signature has been put in correctly. Sometimes there is a mistake where it can be put in incorrectly, which can cause problems.”

Donnelly cited an example from one constituent in west Dublin, where it required the services of a family friend of a friend who worked for the gardaí to get the process sorted.

Richmond noted that 440,00 passports have been issued so far in 2025 and remarked “I dare say everyone in this House has witnessed at least one passport form in the past week.”

The crux of Donnelly’s question, however, relates to the process of getting signatures from a local garda station, and Richmond explained that this was a necessary security process.

The Dublin Rathdown TD explained that only first-time adult online and first-time child online applicants have to avail of the garda signature process, and said it adds an extra layer of security.

He said that just 17% of passport applications require a garda witness.

“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,” he explained.

Richmond, Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade noted “the passport service is continuously looking, however, at ways to make the application process easier for applicants, including the enhancement of digital services, and would therefore welcome the digitisation of the records maintained by An Garda Síochána when witnessing applications.”

“Where viable, we will look at all potential options for modernising the facility, he said.

“The main deciding feature is the veracity of the Irish passport. It is impossible to forge, and that is specifically important when we talk about applications for children and protecting minors in that service.”

Conceding that the current system is “a little onerous,” Richmond said, “it is there for good reason.”

“That does not, however, preclude options for completely and continuously improving it; I am more than happy to work, particularly with Deputy Donnelly, on how we can improve this system,” he said.