Set up a passport office here

DUNDALK would be the ideal location to set up an additional passport office to deal with the increase in the number applications from the North and Britain, a senator has suggested.

The Roscommon senator raised the issue last week in Seanad Eireann and proposed that a new office could be located in Dundalk or additional resources should be given to the passport printing centre in Balbriggan.

Mr Leydon, Fianna Fail’s frontbench spokesperson on European Affairs and Children, said: ‘I recommend to the Passport Office that it open a dedicated section in Balbriggan or Dundalk to deal exclusively with passport applications from Northern Ireland and Britain.

‘At present, it is taking approximately 15 days to get a standard Irish passport and every member has been inundated with requests to expedite passports.

‘If the new applications arrive, it will absolutely inundate the Passport Office. That office is doing an excellent job but it needs more staff. It should allocate more staff to the Balbriggan office or open a new dedicated office in Dundalk. It is the only positive side to Brexit that I can see at present.

‘It will allow our friends in Northern Ireland to travel the length and breadth of Europe and beyond with an Irish European passport. The same applies to Irish people in Britain. A total of 90,000 people born in England applied for and received Irish passports over the past decade, while 150,000 people born in Northern Ireland are entitled to passports through parents or grandparents and they applied for them in the last ten years’.