Immigration Minister Explains Passport Hiccup

Eamon Courtenay

As for the delay in the issuance of new passports, Minister Courtenay explained the issue that arose out of the orders that were initially made for new travel documents around the time that a new passport system had been implemented.

Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Immigration

“We did an assessment of the amount of passports that were being processed and therefore we ordered passports on the basis of that, plus.  In other words, I don‘t remember the exact figures right now but if we were processing five hundred per week, we would have programmed for seven hundred.  So it was a significant amount in excess.  As I have said before, we clearly miscalculated the amount of demand and therefore the initial stock ran down far quicker.  Now, it‘s not a store that you just go and buy the balance, we have to put in an order.  We had orders programmed, so we had to bring some forward which required them to stop printing the passport for some other country and put in ours and print some, send it to us so that we could continue.”