Ireland’s passport service is expected to be under “significant pressure this year”, according to Simon Coveney, the minister for Foreign Affairs.

The Irish Times reports that more than 400,000 Irish passports have been issued to date and there are about 190,000 applications in the system, though this does not represent a backlog, the minister said.

Mr Coveney as questioned by a number of TDs in the Dáil who wanted to know about passport turnaround times and delays in the system. He said that the 400,000 issued to date compared to 335,000 passports which were issued in the same period in 2019, the last highest year.

Increase in Britons applying for Irish passports

Ever since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, the number of Britons applying for an Irish passport has been increasing constantly, though the pandemic did affect the numbers in 2020 and 2021.

It is thought that at least 10 percent of the UK’s population is estimated to qualify for an Irish passport, not including Northern Ireland. Residents of the UK whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland can apply for Irish passports.

Mr Coveney compared the busiest month in 2019 when 105,000 passports were received to February of this year when the number was 157,000, and 117,000 passports issued in April alone, with 45 percent of adult renewal passports being issued within one to two working days.

‘Huge resources’

He added that while there was a very high volume of applications in the system, this was not considered a backlog, and that “huge resources” had been pumped into the Passport Service in for the form of extra staff and space.

While there have been some problems with paperwork and glitches in the system, there were going to be some 900 people in the Passport Offices in three different locations in the summer dealing with “volumes of passports that we’ve never seen before”.

He added that the majority of applications would be delivered “very smoothly”.

Concern has been raised about first-time applications and worries that families would have to cancel holidays because of not having their passport in place on time.

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