A family is missing an audience with Pope Francis due as the mother could not secure a passport in time, the Dáil has been told.
Fianna Fáil TD Jennifer Murnane O’Connor raised the issue with Taoiseach Micheál Martin saying the difficulties getting the passport were “unacceptable”.
Government and Opposition TDs have been complaining for months about the length of time it is taking for passports to be issued amid a surge in demand for travel after pandemic restrictions were eased.
Ms Murnane O’Connor, a Carlow-Kilkenny TD told the Dáil that one of her friends had applied for passports for herself and four children on April 8th.
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She said the children’s passports arrived but the mother was asked for further information on May 31st and she sent it in.
However, her passport did not arrive by Tuesday June 21st when the family were due to fly to Rome.
The audience with Pope Francis was due to take place on Thursday.
Ms Murnane O’Connor said: “This passport was urgent because this family were picked from the Kildare and Leighlin diocese, with an audience, with the Pope in the World Meeting of Families 2022.”
Ms Murnane contacted the offices of the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney late last week in a last-ditch effort to try and get the application processed but she said the woman “did not fly out today and I just think it’s unacceptable”.
She also said that the woman had visited the Passport Office on Friday and Monday and “she said they were not one bit nice to her or not one bit helpful”.
Mr Martin said the issue is “very distressing for the family”.
“Normally it’s a passport application for children tends to be the difficulty, not the mother of the child,” he noted.
He said he would raise the issue with the Department of Foreign Affairs adding: “I can’t understand how that happened particularly if the children’s passports were all sorted.”
