Public urged to apply early for passports as 33,000 led the summer rush last week

Sinn Féin TD Ruairí Ó Murchú said the sheer volume “could lead to people missing holidays or whatever else”. However, the office denied there were any delays this year, once a satisfactory application is made.

Two years ago, there were major backlogs as too few staff tried to tackle a post-Covid tidal wave of applications.

The Passport Service said it had issued more than 422,000 passports to date this year, adding “virtually all complete passport applications are being processed within or ahead of advertised turnaround times”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: “Processing times do not begin when an applicant applies online. It is calculated once the Passport Service receives any supporting documents that are required to complete the application.”

Mr Ó Murchú said: “People are finding when their documents are uploaded that there seems to be an issue in relation to getting it through checking. I don’t know if the question arises as to whether there are enough checkers.

“I’m also being told that paper applications are taking an incredibly long time. I think there is a need to streamline the service.”

Independent TD Verona Murphy said she previously raised issues about the need for gardaí to verify identities for first-time applicants – and the difficulty in locating a garda was a problem.

She said it was “a very labour-intensive exercise”, adding that one applicant from her constituency had made four fruitless visits to a garda station.

She told Tánaiste Micheál Martin: “We have to identify a system that alleviates this, where the gardaí verify a photo of the person making the application.”

But Mr Martin said the security dimension was “essential to passports”.

He said: “The speed at which one can get passports today online is quite dramatic. It’s a good service.”

Current passport turnaround times are 10 working days for simple adult online renewals and 15 working days for complex or child online renewals.

Applicants should allow 20 working days for first-time online applications, and eight weeks for paper applications.

In situations where applicants need their passport renewed urgently, the public offices of the Passport Service in Dublin and Cork operate a four-day urgent appointment service.

A spokesman said: “We encourage everyone to apply online through the Passport Online service which offers citizens the ability to apply for their passport 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”