The world is over-heating, war is raging in Europe and Ireland is struggling with a chronic shortage of housing and a soaring cost of living. Against this background, and amidst a busy legislative schedule, the country’s elected representatives have still found the time to contact the Passport Service 12,200 times in the last five months alone to ask about the status of constituents’ applications.
Delays in issuing passports are a real cause of stress for many people; there is no argument about that. Calls for more staff to be assigned to the work of dealing with the unprecedented post-pandemic demand, and for a service that is more responsive to citizens seeking updates on their applications, are well made. In an electoral system that rewards politicians for spending their time tending to the problems of individual voters, they can hardly be blamed for trying to help.
The remarkable thing is that the Passport Service, which is run by the Department of Foreign Affairs, has built a specific system to facilitate the special treatment of TDs. Elected representatives contact the Oireachtas Urgent Query Service, a type of hotline for updates but one which is not advertised and is only available indirectly to people who have the awareness and the wherewithal to contact their local politician. Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney recently capped the number of passport queries TDs can submit per week to 20, provoking the ire of Oireachtas members. Coveney’s predecessor, Charlie Flanagan, said passport applications are now taking up around 30 per cent of the workload of his office.
This is how Irish politics too often works. Instead of dealing with the root problem by improving the system or enabling applicants to contact the service directly, the department has opted for a bespoke form of institutionalised clientelism. If a call from a TD results in preferential treatment, then, unless it is an emergency, that is wrong. If the system is designed merely to enable TDs to tell constituents that they are doing something, then it is a pointless waste of resources at a time when the office has no spare capacity.