Irish Passport Office Urged To Cater For Demand

As travel restrictions ease, calls are being made for the Irish Passport Office to open more frequently

As travel restrictions begin to ease and people begin to book their holidays for 2022, the Irish passport office have reported that they are set to become overwhelmed with applications over the coming months.

Following the Irish Governments announcement last week that mostly all of the Covid-19 restrictions were eased, there has already been a massive surge in passport applications. With expectation that 1.7 passport applications will be submitted over the course of the next few months.

This is not helped by the backlog of 113,000 passport applications which the Irish Passport Office was already facing due to Covid-19 closures.

In 2021, the annual total for issued passports was one million. However this figure is set to be trumped quickly in 2022.

Garret Ahearn,  Fine Gael senator, stated that “We should look at a roster system for a full seven-day period rather than five. This needs to be treated as an emergency over the next number of months to make sure that everyone who wants a passport to support the aviation industry, to support the travel agencies and to get back to normality gets that passport”

news