About 80,000 passports delayed due to incomplete forms

About 80,000 people face delays in receiving passports each year because the application forms they hand in are incomplete, according to new figures.

Despite it being an extraordinarily busy time of year due to last-minute submissions from panicked holidaymakers, officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs have confirmed that backlogs associated with processing Passport Express requests are minimal, with applicants told to expect a 12-day waiting period instead of the usual 10.

The new passport card unveiled by Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan earlier this year which had a prescribed release date of July will now not be available until late September.

However, a spokeswoman for the department insisted that this has not contributed to general delays.

The new credit-card sized passport, valid for travel within the EU and the European Economic Area, will cost €35 with an additional postage charge of €5 for those outside Ireland and will be valid for a maximum of five years and available to all Irish citizens who are over 18 and hold a valid Irish passport.

The printing company DLRS, who produce the passport booklet, will produce the card.

A department spokeswoman said while a target date of July was set, to improve the durability of the card “the manufacturer deemed it necessary to alter the polycarbonate structure”.

“This will mean that the card issued to the public meets the highest international standards of polycarbonate cards. It has caused a slight lengthening of the time it takes to manufacture the card, and the new target date of issue is mid-to-end of September.”

Free app

It will launch together with a free smartphone app, through which users can apply for cards and take photographs of themselves that meet international standards for passports.

The credit-card-sized passport is designed to fit in a wallet or purse, and will be accepted for travel within the EU and the European Economic Area.

The department said it will be useful to travellers whose regular passport is with an embassy as part of a visa application process, and will also be accepted as a form of ID.

“The passport card will be particularly useful for young people who use their passport booklet as identification, especially on nights out,” Mr Flanagan said.

The security features on the passport card include the holder’s signature, a kinegram overlay featuring a 12-string harp, a machine-readable zone and faded printing around the edge of the photograph.

The card will have a maximum validity of five years (or the remaining validity of an individual’s passport book), and security features include an embedded hologram photograph on a strip on the reverse side.

This is the first occasion on which this security feature will be used on travel documents.

Adult passport booklets currently cost €80 for a 10-year book with 32 pages, or €110 for a 66-page version.