Summer is fast approaching and hundreds of thousands of Irish holidaymakers will be jetting off for a well-deserved break over the coming months.
It's set to be a really busy few months for the Irish Passport Service, as people rush to renew their passports before the busy tourist season. To help speed the process along for first time applications and renewals, the Irish Passport Service has added three new enhancements.
Speaking on Claire Byrne's RTE radio show this week, Siobhan Byrne Director of the Passport Service in the Department of Foreign Affairs said that so far they have received over 380,000 applications. "In January alone we received 148,000 applications which was the second busiest month on record.
Read more: Passport warning for tourists heading on Spain and Portugal holidays
"A lot of planning has gone in to ensure we can meet this high demand as it was expected. I'm happy to say we are in a good position with our service delivery with both the issuing of passports and responding the customer queries to our phones and our webchats."
Renewing or applying for your first time passport online
When renewing your adult passport online, the average turnaround times are just 10 working days. The Passport Service normally do not require any supporting documents for these applications.
Siobhan Byrne said: "Online is a much quicker process and it's much cheaper for the applicant to apply online. So for an adult renewing it's 10 days and for a child it's 15 days, and for a first time applicant it's 20 days."
She warned that technically day one of the passport application process begins "when the documentation is received". Ms Byrne added that when the online application process is compared to the paper process there's no differentiation between adult renewals or the most complex applications, so all of the applications are processed in about eight weeks.
What are the new enhancements introduced?
- Eircode look up feature for address
Children who are born in Ireland their parents no longer need to send in their birth cert
Citizenship for first time applications check list
Ms Byrne also said that they are responding to around 3,000 phone calls a day and that the wait time is longest on a Monday. "I would advise anybody who wants to ring the Passport Service to maybe avoid Mondays because people have prepared their documentation and so on may have questions.
"And also, early in the morning is quite busy so the waiting times are certainly shorter in the afternoons and later in the week. Monday is definitely the busiest day for on the phone."
What causes passport application delays?
According to Siobhan Byrne, there are several common mistakes that people make during the application process that causes their application to be delayed. She explained: "It's a variety of things, the new enhancements we have put in place are focused on the areas that are the most complex.
"So if it's a complicated citizenship application the most common errors we would see are some documents being omitted. We built this new enhancement which means it's far more intuitive to the customer and we're advising the customer much more clearly in relation to what they need to send in."
Ms Byrne is advising applicants sending in documentation to read through the instructions very carefully and to follow them, and to ensure that everything has been included. Photographs and guardianship for children are also a common mistake made by passport applicants, and there are videos on the Irish Passport Service's website that can help them to do it properly.
For more information about the Passport Service, click here.
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