Over 1m passports issued in ‘record-breaking year’

A total of 1.08 million Irish passports were issued in 2022, a “record-breaking” year for the service.

The passport service issued its one millionth passport of the year on November 1st, during what the Department of Foreign Affairs have described as an “extremely busy year”, with a record number of citizens applying for passports in the aftermath of Covid-19.

That number continued to rise over the last two months, coming to a total of 1.08 million by year-end, the Department said in a statement on Thursday. The previous all-time high was in 2019, when 935,000 passports were issued.

The number of first-time passport applications from Northern Ireland and Great Britain was 100,000 out of over 1.15 million total applications received this year.

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Outside of applications from the island of Ireland and from Great Britain, the highest number of online applications came from the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany and South Africa.

The most popular surname of the applicants was Murphy and the most popular baby girls’ names were Emily, Fiadh and Lily, while Noah, Jack and James topped the baby boys’ list.

The oldest applicant was 102 and the youngest was just 3 days old, the department said.

August was the busiest month for customer service hub phone calls, with more than 41,000 calls handled, while July was the busiest month for the webchat service, with over 23,000 chats.

Micheál Martin, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, said the service saw “extraordinary volumes” of applications received and passports issued.

“This was a direct result of pent-up demand due to disruptions to travel throughout 2020 and 2021. The Government made significant investment over the year to scale up services to meet this demand,” he said.

“The Passport Service received over 1.15 million passport applications in 2022 and is set to issue just under 1.1 million passports by the end of the year. Over 99 per cent of all online renewal applications and paper applications are issued within the standard turnaround times.”

Mr Martin said that enhancements were put in place in the customer service hub to enable it to handle over 280,000 calls and more than 126,000 chats through its online chat room service.

The Tánaiste thanked the staff in the passport service who he said responded to the challenges by “demonstrating great diligence and resilience”.

“The historic achievement of over one million passports issued in a calendar year is down to their commitment to public service and hard work. My department will continue to work to ensure that our services meet the needs of our citizens in 2023,” he said.

Next year is likely to be another busy year, Mr Martin said, urging anyone who is considering travelling to check their passport’s validity and to use the online service to renew it if necessary.