The Passport Service is currently processing 182,000 applicants. Nevertheless, the Department of Foreign Affairs has said that this does not indicate a backlog.
According to the Irish Examiner report, nearly 11,000 more applicants were recorded than six months ago, and while 70% of these applicants are required to submit additional documents in order to progress their application, reports that over 3,000 people who have submitted all of these documents have been waiting for their passport since September last year.
Because of the gradual increase in the cases of the COVID-19 infection as well as the new variant of the Coronavirus, the authorities in Ireland have placed entry bans and other restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading further.
Meanwhile, not long ago, the authorities in Ireland made the announcement that they lifted all the restrictions imposed to stop the increase of the cases of the variant of COVID-19 variant.
Additionally, the increase in international travel has marked a significant rise, as has been observed in Dublin Airport.
As per the Central Statistics Office of Ireland (CSO), departures from Ireland increased by 40% from January to February, with more than 785,000 people departing the country last month.
Along with this, at the same time, other people are waiting for their passport applications to be processed for an extended amount of time.
In this regard, Foreign Affairs Minister named Simon Coveney stated that approximately 104,000 applications for passports were received just one month ago.
Furthermore, Coveney has highlighted in the statement, “It is the experience of the Passport Service that applicants can take weeks & sometimes even months after they register their application online to submit documents such as birth certificates & witnessed consent forms.”
He further mentioned, “Once the additional documents are received, they are prioritized, and where applications are complete can now be processed in three weeks. This significantly reduces the processing time, particularly for first-time applicants.”
