PASSPORT chiefs have been nominated for two awards — despite delays costing families their hols.
The Government yesterday boasted about the “fast and efficient” processing system being put up for the gongs.
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It has been nominated at the National Procurement Awards, which are run by an events company called Business River.
The Passport Office came under extreme pressure earlier this year due to an explosion in numbers needing travel docs as the world reopened after the pandemic.
Some 720,000 passports have been issued so far this year, compared to 634,000 in 2021.
After Covid restrictions were lifted, politicians were inundated with calls from constituents begging for help to speed up their passport application so they wouldn’t miss their holiday.
Due to the volume of queries from TDs and Senators, a special parliamentary phone line to the Passport Office has to be set up.
At one point, almost 200,000 people were waiting for their request to be processed.
As a result, the Passport Office received almost five times more official complaints this year than in 2019 — the year before Covid shut down travel.
Despite all of the chaos, the Department of Public Expenditure yesterday sent out a press release hailing the nods for the the new Passport Issuing and Processing System.
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The Department of Foreign Affairs bought it for €2million in September 2021 with the aim of speeding up applications.
It’s nominated for ‘Best Public Sector, Semi-State or Government Procurement Project of the Year’ and ‘Best Procurement External Collaboration Project of the Year’.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs told the Irish Sun that the new passport system that was nominated for the awards is not yet up and running.
They said: “The current technology is almost 20 years old and the new system will bring greater resilience, and capacity for passport processing.
“The contract for delivery of the new processing system was signed with HID Global in October 2021 and it is currently in the design phase.”
Earlier this year we revealed how more than €13million has been spent trying to improve Ireland’s underfire passport service in the last five years.
