BACKBENCH TDs from all political parties are expected to oppose any attempt to end special rules that allow them to secure passports at short notice for constituents, following the Government's decision to review the system.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has asked his department's secretary general, Dermot Gallagher, to conduct a review of all aspects of the facility, including whether it should be continued.
The decision may cause difficulties for Fine Gael TD, Phil Hogan, who strongly criticised Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last month for securing a passport for Manchester-based casino developer Norman Turner in 1994.
Mr Hogan has cast doubt on official figures indicating that 6,000 passports were processed by TDs last year.
The fast-track system was created in 1994 by the then minister for foreign affairs, Dick Spring, in response to complaints from the public about the length of time it took to get a passport, when long queues were the norm.
Since then, however, the Passport Office has seen major investment and passports can now be secured by post in 14 days, while applicants can track the progress of their application online.
"Following a major investment, Ireland has now one of the most secure passports in the world, and a service to the public that is second to none," the Minister for Foreign Affairs told Mr Hogan in a written parliamentary reply yesterday.
Standing over the assertion that 6,000 passports were fast-tracked for TDs last year, Mr Ahern said he was "satisfied" that previous Dáil answers were correct.
Mr Hogan, a Carlow-Kilkenny TD, in January discovered, using the Freedom of Information Act, that the Taoiseach's constituency office had processed Mr Turner's 1994 application.
The Deparment of Foreign Affairs is now expected to seek the opinions of TDs who avail of the system before writing up a report for the Minister.
No deadline for the report has been set.
Last night, Mr Hogan's Fine Gael colleague Michael Ring expressed unhappiness that any threat to the system might exist: "I would not be in favour of any change," he told The Irish Times.
Constituents, he said, occasionally run into problems with postal applications because the Passport Office does not check the applications on their arrival, but rather only when it is about to process them.
In such cases, it is too late to fix the problem by post and constituents have to drive to Dublin to sort out the problems, or else call on the services of a TD to use the fast-track system.
"Sometimes, the picture is wrong, because they won't accept ones unless you are looking seriously into the camera.
"Sometimes, they write down their Christian name rather than the full name as it appears on the birth cert.
"Sometimes, they forget to fill out a line in the application form. If they found out straight away that they had made a mistake they could sort it out by post, but they don't," Mr Ring said.
On other occasions, people "genuinely don't realise that their passport is out of date until the last minute, or it gets lost a day, or two before they are going to the airport," he went on.
He said he would not object to the ending of the fast-track system if a passport office was created in Galway, close enough for his constituents to drive to quickly if they had to, but not otherwise.
"It is a good system. It doesn't do any harm. We are not doing any harm, and we are helping, Mr Ring said.
"People make mistakes and there has to be some way of sorting them out when that happens," he said.
