The confiscation of passports by bouncers or security guards is to be made a criminal offence following a number of cases where young people have had their passports taken attempting to get into nightclubs and bars.
The Irish Times has learned that Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is to introduce a clause to the new Passport Bill to ban the taking of a passport by anyone, with some exceptions, mainly gardaí.
In one recent case a girl had her passport taken by a bouncer in Tralee when she tried to get into a nightclub. The girl was without her passport for a week and the matter was raised by the Department of Foreign Affairs with gardaí in Kerry. The department said it has come across similar instances recently in Cork.
Many young people use passports as proof of age to get into a nightclub or to buy a drink.
The new Passport Bill, to be published in early December, will provide for anyone who seizes a passport in such circumstances to be given a major fine and/or up to five years imprisonment, Mr Ahern said yesterday.
He said he would not tolerate security guards or bouncers demanding and seizing passports from young people. "A passport is a very valuable document and should not be handed over to anyone." Young people were often confronted with security guards either in uniforms or with earpieces and are "cowed by these authority figures" to hand over their passports.
"They should not do so. The message is going out loud and clear to these people that if they do this they could end up being jailed for five years. I want anyone who has suffered at the hands of these people to immediately report the matter to the gardaí. They have absolutely no right to take a passport from our citizens."
The Passport Bill is the first primary legislation relating specifically to passports that has been proposed since the foundation of the State. The legislation will assist in the smooth introduction of biometric passports introduced recently and will provide for a series of new offences relating to the fraudulent use of passports.