The Irish Passport Service has issued one million passports in a single calendar year, for the first time.
The passport service issued the one millionth official travel document yesterday afternoon, 01 November.
The service came under scrutiny earlier this year after it struggled to cope with the high demand for passports.
When international travel reopened fully at the start of 2022 after two years of covid restrictions, a large number of Irish passport holders renewed their travel documents, and in many cases, for their dependents putting the passport service came under immense pressure.
Speaking yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney paid tribute to the staff at the Passport Service and congratulated them on the “historic achievement”.
The issuing of one million passports in the first 10 months of this year surpasses the previous record of 935,000 passports issued over the full year in 2019. 634,000 passports were issued in 2021, while 450,000 were processed in 2020.
