The Passport Service is bracing itself for a record number of applications next year after a steep decline while overseas travel was largely halted during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Siobhán Byrne, director of the service, expects to see the beginnings of a surge in applications soon, with travel restrictions due to ease from mid-July, but says she would need a “crystal ball” in order to predict when the pent up demand will start to surface.
“There will be more demand next year than ever before,” she said. “It’s a difficult one to predict for this year without doing a survey to see how many people are going to travel and how many people are going to respond to the opening up of international travel.”
A net effect of the pandemic has been that many people have had no reason to apply for a passport or to renew their documentation. Service staff estimate that between 450,000 and 500,000 applications never materialised last year, and while it may yet fall, the number looks like being similar this year.
Applications
In 2019, 937,000 passports were issued against 958,000 applications. Last year, the service took in over half a million applications and cleared 450,000.
During the height of lockdowns, the service focused on emergencies – people abroad, medical cases or even some requiring documents to get married.
Passport applications cannot be processed remotely and the service limped on while about a quarter of its staff were, for a time, redirected to helpwith the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and contact tracing.
The service’s 450 strong team, now fully back to office-based work, has cleared 40 per cent of an 89,000 application backlog that built up while Covid-19 guidelines curtailed operations. Office numbers were halved and, consequently, the ability produce physical documents.
There were fewer than 10,000 applications in both January and February, but the figure increased to about 40,000 in April and about 60,000 in May, a month that in normal times would normally see just over 100,000 applications.
“There certainly is going to be more demand for passports next year than we will have seen in any other year and the half million that didn’t’ apply last year will be a significant factor in that,” Ms Byrne said.
While the service is expecting pent up demand running into next year, its biggest fear now is that people do not get them renewed in time.
“We want to be able to issue people passports for their holidays but if everybody applies in the space of two weeks that’d be your perfect storm that would create a significant problem,” she said.
Balbriggan offices
Next year’s expected rise in applications falls nicely with ongoing plans to expand the service’s Balbriggan offices, and Ms Byrne said it was “possible” that additional staff could be taken on depending on just how much of a surge they experience. Staff numbers typically expand to about 650 every year to deal with seasonal demand.
If one thing is certain, the perceived value of an Irish passport, in terms of physical quality and reputation, means the approach to processing them, particularly first time applications, will not be loosened because of pressures in the system.
“The Irish passport is ranked fifth in the world because we maintain such high standards around our processing and the verification of citizenship and identity,” Ms Byrne said (there are a number of passport ranking surveys).
“That’s a really important factor because it allows Irish citizens to travel more freely around the world. And while that’s great for travel it is also hugely beneficial to our economy because people also travel for work.”
