A passport storm is brewing

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

It was only at the end of January that the government lifted the restrictions around social distancing; only then that we were allowed to arrive at a bar without a reservation and order drinks without social distancing and then An Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced that we had, at last, “weathered the Omicrom storm”.

So, like so many others, I looked forward to dusting off the cobwebs and constraints of the last two years of a pandemic lockdown this summer.

With the storm barricades being lifted and everyone anxious to return to a perceived ‘normality’, it was expected that people would want – no, that they would need – to get away; to plan long overdue breaks, whether at home abroad, possibly in the realms of sunnier climate.

After the storm, it was tempting.

In an article, published on February 4, 2022, (Irish Times, by Mark Hilliard) it was reported that Minister Coveney recognised there was pent up demand and that the staff at the Passport Office was set to double from 460 last summer to 900 by the end of March this year and that there was a fund of €10 million set aside for the Passport Service.

Minister Coveney also acknowledged that they were expecting in the region of 1.7 million passport applications.

The highest ever number applications was in 2019, pre-Covid, when 935,000 passport applications were processed, but the minister offered assurances that there would be capacity to meet the demand.

I was one of the people who finally succumbed to the urge to get away; to concede to the idea of air travel once again.

So, I opened the drawer and pulled out the passports, only to find, as many other people did, that after a two-year lockdown, all of them were close to their expiry dates.

Mine own was a ‘simple’ adult renewal and it was processed and back in my hand in five days. Marvellous!

As for my daughter – that is another story.

This was a ‘complex’ Child Renewal, but my planned travel date was outside of the ‘15 working days’ timeframe for such a renewal.

I was confident, however, that I would get it in time. How complex can a child’s passport renewal be?

As my daughter’s travel date approached, it became stressful. We watched the Customer Service Hub and the ‘Passport Tracker’ almost hourly to see if any progress had been made.

The anticipated delivery date was a full seven days outside of the planned travel date.

We were all stressed.

Documents were with the Passport Office, but nothing was happening.

I tried to call the Passport Office every day but due to high volumes, they were not accepting any calls.

I tried the webchat service but the continually grey out box let me know they were not online – and they were never going to be online. It was out of service.

I tried to make a one-day turnaround appointment, but I had a better chance of winning the National Lottery!

I trawled the internet for news, anything to give me hope, but the more I searched, the more anxious I became.

There was no shortage on Twitter and Facebook of examples of people, who had been waiting for weeks, even months, after the expected issue date; people who had missed family holidays, school tours, were out of pocket; and the more I searched, the more fraught I was.

Now, the Passport Office would prefer you not make any travel arrangements until you have your passport in hand, but in the real world, flights need to be booked some time in advance in order to avail of better prices and one cannot wait for a passport to arrive at some unknown date in the future in order to book a transatlantic flight – by then the summer could be over and prices back to peak levels.

In a recent article I read, (Irish Mirror, June 7, by Clare McCarthy), Minister Coveney revealed that the lengthy delays are due to the huge increase in passport applications. Yet, he knew about that in February. He says the service is dealing with a jump of 50-60% in applications this year and in six months has already issued the same number of passports as were issued in the whole of 2021 (in 2021 we were in a pandemic and no one was travelling anywhere).

In February, he acknowledged the expectation of 1.7 million applications, a 55% rise on the 2019 high figure of 935,000 applications processed.

None of those numbers should have come as any surprise to Minister Simon Coveney, or to anyone else in the Passport Office.

Yet, they were not prepared.

Where are the extra staff that were to be in place by March 2022? And what of the €10 million that was set aside for the Passport Service?

It appears that the Passport Service has regressed and is not answerable to anyone; certainly not the public.

I went to the Passport Office, my husband and I both taking time off work, to speak to someone in person in a last ditch effort to release a passport from their clutches, only to be referred back to the online service.

There was nothing that they could do, only tell me that my application was ‘in process’.

If there had been somebody answering phones, or responding on the webchat, I could have got that information and would not have travelled with a glimmer of hope in my daughter’s eye, only to dash it to tears on the journey home.

Is this just a side-step by Minister Simon Coveney? Has he been watching the moves made by his colleague, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly?

Is this going to be like the Pandemic Special Recognition Payment first announced in January of 2022? By April Minister Donnelly was saying the payment would be made “as soon as possible… through the next available payroll…” (press release: Dept. Of Health April 15, 2022).

Then the minister stood before the INMO conference on May 6, and told them the payment should be made “immediately”.

Yet, five months later, it still has not been rolled out, and as Karen McGowan, president of the INMO, said: “It has turned in to a protracted process which has taken the good news out of the announcement.”

Many frontline healthcare workers, who have worked long and hard during the pandemic have yearned for a ‘summer of freedom’, an opportunity to travel and meet family and friends they haven’t seen for two years, visit grandchildren that have been born but who they have not seen, or visit graves for relatives that have died without them at their side.

Are the public going to be once again let down by a government service?

Let’s not even start about Dublin Airport!

From a Mullingar reader (details with editor).