The Irish Passport Office has announced welcome changes to the procedure of applying for children's documents as the backlog nears 200,000.
It is understood that many people are coping with long delays in receiving their passports as errors are being found every day - particularly with first-time applicants.
This evening, it has been confirmed that applications for children will no longer be cancelled if a witnessing garda cannot be contacted, the Irish Independent reports.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney confirmed there are up to 50 applicants paused due to errors every day and those people are in need of new consent forms due to the fact that they cannot get in touch with witnessing Gardai.
He explained: “From now on, a daily list will be transmitted between the passport office and Garda management of the circa 50 cases where contact hasn’t been made and the contact will then be initiated on the Garda side, meaning the application won’t be cancelled.”
The backlog is nearing 200,000 as many frustrated holidaymakers await their delayed passports.
In recent weeks, many have been taking to Twitter to complain about waiting months for their kid’s travel documents - which are causing the most issues.
One woman wrote: ”I'm sure you've got thousands of these queries, but I applied for my daughter’s passport renewal on the 10/5/22 and it said the live turnaround time was 15 days.
“So we booked a holiday on 10/6/22. I checked the tracker today and it said the estimated date of issue was 13/6/22!!!! 33 days after first application was received.
“It was an online renewal for a child with correct follow-up paperwork sent on the same day. Please can you do something to make it arrive on the 9th we are desperate at this stage?”
Another said: “2 months tomorrow since we submitted an online renewal for child's passport. Finally got through y'day [sic] on phone.
“No probs with the application "ring back again next week!" Took 2 weeks to get through! Fly on 2nd July.”
Mr. Coveney went on to say that the Passport Service is seeing record demand, beyond that seen in "the previous busiest year (2019)" by almost 20%.
There have been nearly 560,000 passports issued to date in 2022, which marks and increase of nearly 90,000 compared to 2019.
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