Surge in passport demand continues for past year
According to new figures, applications for passports from people with Irish heritage in Great Britain are already 28% to 81,287 ahead for the entire total for 2016.
According to figures provided by the Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney in a written reply to Fianna Fáil TD Daragh O’Brien, they show that passport applications from people living in the North are also already far ahead of last year’s total.
To date this year, 80,964 applications for passports have been made from people in the North, against 67,563 applications for 2016.
In a response to Independents 4 Change TD Tommy Broughan, Mr Coveney said: “Between January 1 and December 7 this year, the Passport Service received 781,716 passport applications, which represents a 12.4% increase over the same period last year.
There are currently 29,652 applications in progress. These are applications that are going through the normal checking process rather than a backlog.”
In response to the seasonal spike in demand and the general increase in applications, 230 temporary clerical officers were recruited into the Passport Service this year.
