Passport Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

We have campaigns but what I always try to do, and I encourage colleagues to do as well, is to highlight, insofar as possible and as often as possible, on our own social media and our own channels, just how important it is for people to apply on time. The ones that we hear about, and the ones that come to our offices, are naturally those instances where a mistake has been made, people have forgotten or people do not realise their passport is out of date. In particular, people might decide at the last minute to take a holiday and their infant child does not have their first passport. It is always advisable, therefore, to apply for a child’s passport as early as possible because a much longer process has to be gone through. Citizenship does have to be confirmed and a process also has to be gone through with the Garda and others in terms of checking, so the earlier a person can make those applications, the better. I will continue to make sure that our campaigns roll out throughout the year, and not just throughout the summer months. Actually, it is when it is not the holiday season that people should be thinking about making sure that their house is in order.
In terms of the photos, a lot of what was happening was to do with photos, with faces not being positioned correctly and issues in terms of lighting and backgrounds. There are video tutorials for families to be able to look at how to make sure their photo is correct and what they are sending in is correct. Where there are issues continuously emerging, however, as the Deputy highlighted, we need to do more to specifically home in on those issues and highlight them in our online system to ensure that when people go to the Department’s website, they can see those issues very clearly and they are brought to their attention before they make their application.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01