The Minister for Foreign Affairs knows I am not critical of the people in the Passport Office. The opposite is the case. I am grateful for their excellent work but they are under severe pressure. I will give a quick example related to the telephone line for Deputies. Since 17 March, I have called three times about a passport that has been overdue since then. It has been with a checker with three weeks. In another case, where the name is withheld, the passport has been overdue since 4 April and nothing is happening with it. Another case involves passports for a family of three children, all of which have been overdue since 26 April. A number of calls have been made about this case. The family have missed their flights and still do not have passports. Like everybody else, I am inundated with these queries. I know the Minister is under pressure about this service but we have to do better than we are at present, when there are 200,000 people waiting.

I will make a suggestion with which I am sure everyone will agree, including the Ceann Comhairle.

The Ceann Comhairle is here long enough to remember when there was a service located just down the street that dealt with passport queries from Oireachtas Members. One might ask whether that was-----

The Deputy is out of time.

One might ask whether that involved favouritism in dealing with the queries of Deputies and Senators, but we are here to try to expedite matters.

The Deputy is out of time.

So are the people looking for their passports.

Those were very different days in terms of numbers. We are currently delivering 5,000 passports a day to people in Ireland. Last month, 170,000 passports went out successfully. This year, we will do about 1.4 million passports. The highest figure in any other year was about 900,000. We are talking about passport demand increasing by approximately 50% in a year. This summer, we will have 900 people in the Passport Office. Last summer, it was 460. This year, we have a special phone line for Oireachtas offices. It has been under pressure and we are adding more people to it today. It has taken well over 10,000 calls so far this year, however. Obviously, we are also looking to put more people on the public call line and the webchat service. We are upscaling by putting far more people in to respond to a massive increase in demand, but we also rely on the public to make sure the applications are online and accurate, where possible. The problems are nearly always linked to first-time applicants. Of all renewals, 43% are given back within 48 hours. It is important to focus on the positives as well as the negatives.