A passport office may be opened in the west of the country under Government plans to cope with the demand of applications.
It comes as Ministers and TDs are facing increased pressure from constituents and Opposition TDs over the passport service with over 290,000 outstanding applications and hundreds of people facing missing their holiday abroad.
Speaking in Cork on Friday, Mr Varadkar said: “We're looking at the possibility of an additional passport office in the west of the country that would help people out as well.
READ MORE: Leo Varadkar indicates changes to passport service as thousands face missing holidays over delays
"[We are] very strongly encouraging people to apply online if they can because online renewals in particular are being done very quickly.
“They're being done in less than a week in the vast majority of cases where we are running into real difficulties around the paper applications.
“Also, please check your passport now.
“Don't wait to find out at the last minute that it is out of date, you know.”
In a tweet on Friday, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said across three days last week, the passport office printed and issued 21,000 passports, an average of 7,000 every day which was “responding to unprecedented demand.”
He said staff are working “flat out” to deliver for the public.
Fine Gael and Mayo TD Michael Ring said that his office staff are spending 60% of their time dealing with passport issues every day, describing the situation as "outrageous.”
And Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin Bay South Jim O'Callaghan said he believes there should be a passport office in Belfast to help speed up the process.
He said that he expects there to be 1.75 million applications for passports overall this year and described this demand as "unprecedented".
Mr Varadkar added: “The Government acknowledges that we are facing a lot of delays when it comes to providing passports for people.
“A huge amount of work has been done to improve the situation.
“The Passport Office will have printed more passports this year so far than all of last year. We're almost at that point.
“There has been a big increase in staff working in the passport office, that's going to increase further.”
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter .
