Politics

Almost 50,000 Irish passports lost or stolen over past 18 months

Figures emerge as Passport Service faces peak demand for renewals and new applications, while concerns over ‘bad actors’ also raised

Last year Irish citizens lost 30,345 passports, while 13,769 have been lost to date this year. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Marie O'Halloran
Wed Jun 19 2024 - 17:45

More than 30,000 Irish passports were lost last year and almost 14,000 to date this year, it has emerged.

In addition, almost 3,000 were reported stolen in 2023 and 1,000 so far this year, according to statistics from Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin.

The figures emerge as the Passport Service reaches peak demand for renewing passports and first-time applications.

Last year Irish citizens lost 30,345 passports, while 13,769 have been lost to date this year.

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A total of 2,393 were reported stolen in 2023, and some 1,000 up to early June this year. The figures mean that, in total, 47,507 passports were either lost or stolen in just under 18 months.

The Tánaiste said all passports reported lost or stolen are “cancelled and notified to Interpol at the earliest opportunity”, and that once this happens, they are no longer valid for travel.

He told Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy in a parliamentary reply that the Irish passport has a “strong international reputation due to the strength of the security features within the passport book and the robust processes used in its issuance”.

Mr Martin said it was recently “ranked second in the Henley Global Passport Index, as it provides our citizens with visa-free access to 193 countries”.

Ms Murphy said “30,000 is an enormous number of lost passports and must raise a huge red flag” about what had happened.

[ Large drop in numbers arriving in Ireland without passports ]

She added that it was important to remind people of the importance of the integrity of the Irish passport, and that “from a diplomatic point of view they are high-value documents”.

“You always have to be concerned about bad actors,” Ms Murphy said as she pointed to the expulsion in 2010 of an Israeli diplomat after it emerged that eight forged Irish passports were used in the killing in Dubai of a senior Hamas operative in an operation blamed on the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

The Kildare North TD said that once a passport is reported missing, a new application has to be made and “applications for replacements put added pressure on the Passport Service, particularly at this time of year”.

Currently, online applications take 10 working days for a straightforward renewal and 15 for “complex” renewals. First-time applications for adults and children take 20 working days, with just three days for the renewal of passport card applications.

Paper applications take eight weeks, and the Passport Service points out that in the case of first-time applicants, the waiting time starts once all documentation is received.

Emergency passports can be issued within a day once an appointment is made to attend a passport office three days in advance.

The service last year issued more than one million passports after a post-Brexit surge in demand along with a bottleneck of applications in the wake of the resumption of travel as the Covid pandemic receded.

Marie O'Halloran

Marie O'Halloran

Marie O'Halloran is Parliamentary Correspondent of The Irish Times

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