I start by commending and acknowledging the bravery, professionalism and efficiency of the Dublin Fire Brigade members who dealt with the fire in the Metro Hotel in Ballymun last night. Many of them are still onsite this morning. The dangerous and rapid fire was dealt with by eight units of the fire brigade. The fire started in one of the apartments on the top floor. Units from Finglas, Swords, Tara Street, North Strand, Blanchardstown, Phibsborough and Tallaght were in attendance with over 60 firefighters fighting what could have been a serious blaze.

All of us are grateful and thankful that no one was killed or injured. It shows the fantastic work Dublin Fire Brigade and its firefighters do as well as those from the stations in Skerries and Balbriggan, the retained firefighters, who were brought in to provide cover. We will return to this issue because lessons will need to be learned from this, in particular in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Today is not the day to raise those issues but I and my party colleagues will be putting questions to the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, at the appropriate time.

This morning I raise the question of passports which I have raised on a number of occasions. I refer to the service our citizens are receiving. Last year, as the Tánaiste will know, over 800,000 passports were issued. That was a record. I think all of us expect that will be exceeded this year. That is coming at a price. The increase in passport application numbers is affecting the service the paying public is receiving. I commend the work of the staff in the passport service. However, the reality is that turnaround times have greatly lengthened. The passport service website says 16 working days but it is not. It is 21 working days and longer.

All of us in this House will know of and have received numerous complaints about the service being received by people and over the last number of weeks, in particular.

Hear, hear.

Already this year, from 1 January to 16 February, there were 129,000 applications. That is a 16% increase on the same period last year, and not in the holiday period itself. Normally, temporary staff are employed to tackle the increased demand and the number of applications and we have discussed this before. However, the Government has not dealt with this.

I refer to the increase year round and from Brexit, in particular. There seems to be a detached approach. The Government seems to be satisfied to allow the applicants to wait longer than the normal 15 day turnaround time. Does the Tánaiste accept that these delays in the normal turnaround time are now the norm? Why is the Government not planning to deal with increased demand by increasing staff numbers for the year round increased demand in the passport service?

That was a long three minutes from Deputy Darragh O'Brien.

I gave Deputy Darragh O'Brien three minutes and the Tánaiste has three minutes.

He was only asking.

Three minutes listening to the Tánaiste would be a lot.

Excuse me.

I was not making any accusations.

Sorry, this is a serious business.

The Tánaiste was not making any accusations.

The Tánaiste does not know minutes from hours.

It is nothing to do with the strategic communications unit anyway.

The clock is ticking. The Tánaiste has three minutes.

I join with my colleagues on both sides of this House in thanking the emergency responders who responded to a significant and extensive fire in the Metro Hotel and apartment building in Ballymun last night. There were 11 units of Dublin Fire Brigade, eight fire engines, two aerial appliances and the incident command unit, comprising 60 firefighters, involved in managing that blaze. The professionalism that resulted in the evacuation of 150 people from the building and no loss of life should be recognised in this House. Nobody was injured-----

Praise the Lord.

-----but it could have been a very different and tragic scene. However, it was not. That is a reflection on the professionalism of our emergency services and first responders. Today, the Garda Síochána has the scene cordoned off. There will be an extensive investigation to understand what happened. As Deputy Darragh O'Brien has done, I thank those involved for their professionalism. We will come back to this issue when we have more clarity on what happened and on why and how it unfolded.

On the passports issue, the service has been under pressure, in particular over the last two weeks. A number of Members know that because they have come to me about individual cases. We have tried to put extra resources into my office over the last number of weeks to try to deal with that. We anticipate increased numbers this year on last year in respect of passport applications and renewals. Last year there was a big increase on the year before. There is a big demand for Irish passports now. The real problem in recent weeks was actually the extreme weather.

We had to close services down because staff could not get into the passport office for a number of days. As a result, our passport teams worked over the bank holiday when other people were not working in an effort to try to catch up and get back to the turnaround times we created last year which were a significant improvement on the past. Whether it is online or post applications, we are endeavouring, with some success, to get back to where we were in January and the back end of last year in respect of getting turnaround times down to roughly three weeks for the postal service and two weeks for an online application.

However, that is taking some time. This week online applications are back to the acceptable benchmark. We are working overtime to make sure we get back to that from a postal service perspective as well. However, people have to understand that many services in the country have been impacted by severe weather and this is one of them.