Passport application delays

The adult renewals seem to have pretty cursory checks. It seems pretty automated and often in your letterbox within 48 hours.

Child renewals take longer as there is more scrutiny AFAIK.
 
paulgee said:
DO IT ONLINE! I could not believe what happened. My daughter turned 18 and her passport was out. She got her photo taken at one of the authorised photo shops that give you a reference code and a hard copy.
She applied online with the supplied code. Expected date was weeks away. It landed in the letterbox 48 hours later. I could not believe it! Fantastic set up.
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I'm hopeful - I guess your daughter is now an adult so it's simpler. We have an estimated issue date of 1/11 but need it on 22/10 (applied on Saturday and paper documentation delivered on Tuesday). Our own fault to leave it late but have been dealing with Covid at home so slipped our minds. Fingers crosssed. We do have the potential to get her a UK passport renewal in Belfast, but need a UK resident conutersignatory and a UK delviery address so it's not an easy set of circumstances to pull off (while dealing with Covid at home).
 
RetirementPlan said:
We sent one in about ten days ago. It was scheduled to be issued on 13th October.
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It didn't issue on the 13th, and it took about two days to catch someone on the chat. He was very helpful, and advised he'd flag the application for action. The status note on the tracker said something about waiting for documentation, but he confirmed that this was incorrect. It arrived yesterday.
 
twofor1 said:
Unbelievably efficient at the moment despite covid absenteeism.

I applied online yesterday morning for a straightforward renewal, and the new passport dropped in my letterbox this morning, a mere 25 hours after applying.
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Wow that’s quick
 
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Páid said:
Slightly off topic but I saw what Alan Quinlan wrote this morning https://www.the42.ie/munster-identity-crisis-5648912-Jan2022/

What would a washed up rugby player know about administration, regulation or innovation for that matter?

It must be nice to be sitting behind a desk taking pot shots at something completely unrelated to sport in a sad attempt to be controversial.
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Is the ‘civil service bashing’ not an Eddie O’Sullivan quote in that article?

And the article isn’t written by Alan Quinlan…
 
Sorry, I meant to say "quoted" not written by and I got the name of the person wrong too.

I have corrected my post above. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
We also had a fantastic experience with Passport renewal in December. My son got his photo taken in a "Photo Me" booth in Tesco on a Tuesday afternoon. It gave him 4 pictures and a code. Went home. Around 6pm did his renewal on line using the code for automatic photo upload. Passport arrived in our house at 10am on Thursday morning. Couldn't believe it. A fantastic service.

I was telling my friends about the experience and there happened to be a man close by who said he worked in the Passport office and was delighted to hear me tell people about the good experience as they get such bad press. He went on to say that if you use the renewal system with the photo code, there is rarely any issues. He also said that it is once human interaction takes place, for eg, trying to use your own photo, that issues start to happen.

The renewal system should work automatically, the new and children's passports are more difficult to process for whatever reason I don't know. I imagine a lot more checks have to be in place.
 
Hi, I have applied online for my son's first Irish passport from UK. He's an Irish citizen through Naturalisation. I applied in 3rd November and the issue date was 7th of January. I submitted all the required supporting documents. The status is still "processing". The chat doesn't say when will it be issued. I don't know how long more to wait. He doesn't have any valid ID
 
m.independent.ie

Department insists ‘no backlog’ as 195k people wait for new passports, and blames any delays on form errors

The Department of Foreign Affairs insists there is no backlog in processing passports and has blamed forms being filled out incorrectly, as almost 200,000 people wait for their delayed travel documents ahead of summer holiday season.
m.independent.ie m.independent.ie

Those darn customers and their incorrect applications!

(But apart from the 195k customers waiting for their passports, there’s no delay).
 
Maybe the deliberate policy last year of stalling issuing passport renewals to prevent people leaving the country last year is alot of the reason for the continuing backlog. They basically closed down the passport office during covid.
How were they able to process all the passports in the past when there were no "online" renewals and when it was all paper based. I doubt the passport office has been downsized since then if anything they probably have more employees now?
 
Applied online late last week and got it in the post this morning.
Took a while to get the picture right but other than that it was a very smooth process....
 
Does anyone know if child renewals are taking any longer than adult renewals ATM?

Will send in a renewal for my daughter today, expiry of existing passport is not until 10 July so I should be on safe side.
 
Applied for child renewals myself recently. The first part of the application is online but then you need to print out the guardian/parent consent form and still bring to garda Station for signing. After I posted back these signed forms, it took about a week until the online tracker said they were received. From that date, the online tracker is telling me it will be another 3 weeks. 7 June. I hope it is accurate as going on hols soon after !!
 
1. I recently submitted my own passport renewal online and got the passport back two days later. Top marks.

2. I submitted my child’s passport application in early January.

3. I heard nothing for two months and the tracker told me it was being processed.

4. Throughout March and April I spend hours on the phone trying to get through unsuccessfully as the line was so busy. Ditto with their webchat facility. No joy.

5. In April I eventually got through on the phone and was placed in a queue and after an hour I spoke to a human. She identified an issue with the Garda witness signature. This was never notified to me by email as soon as it was identified which would usually be the case.

6. I got an email from them to download and print the Consent form and got it resigned and witnessed and submitted that day.

7. Last week, I got an email saying the issue now was the child’s photo, which had been provisionally approved by the dfa website online process. The online dfa passport submission application cropped the very top of her head off, leaving no space between the top of her head and the photo border, and then approved the photo for submission.

8. Clicked the link to re-upload the photo and the same issue arose. There was no facility to click “back” to resubmit a different photo so I had to apply for a new resubmission link to be emailed to me. That was last Monday week and I still await the link by email.


It seems to me that instead of reviewing an application in its entirety to identify ALL possible issues, they instead stop processing it once they hit the first issue.

This is inefficient and only adds more work on the Passport Office in the long run. As soon as they came across the first issue with my passport they never notified me of it. I had to chase them to establish the delay, hindered by their general unavailability over the phone and on webchat. When the issue was identified and remedied, they identified a new issue with the photo - a photo they had preapproved was now unsatisfactory.

People make mistakes (up to half the people making applications by the looks of things), but this is no excuse for shoddy and inefficient systems. They perhaps should examine the categories of errors and focus on educating applicants to avoid such errors as well as having systems in place to facilitate the immediate rectification of such errors.
 
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