On 8 April, my friend Helen applied for her passport, as she did for her four children. The passports for her four children came back on 31 May with a request for further information from her, which she sent in. The flights were scheduled for 21 June. This is nearly ten weeks ago and I requested this matter be treated as urgent. Last week, she came to me saying she was so disappointed because this passport was urgent as this family was picked from the Kildare and Leighlin diocese for an audience with the Pope during the World Meeting of Families 2022. This is a family that is representing Ireland. I did everything on Friday to get the passport. I contacted the Taoiseach's office and the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney. I contacted everywhere and she did not fly out today. It is unacceptable that this lady and her four children - it is such a privilege to have an audience with the Pope - did not get her passport. As I said, it has been going for nearly ten weeks. It is unacceptable. The other issue is that Helen went to the Passport Office on Friday and Monday. She said staff there were not one bit nice or helpful to her.

The Taoiseach will need a little infallibility to solve that problem.

Or maybe divine intervention. In a more serious vein, it is very distressing for the family, to be fair. Normally, passport applications for children tend to be the difficulty and not those for the mother. I will raise this with the Department. It is no fault of the Deputy's because she contacted my office yesterday at around 8.30 a.m., as she did others. It is very distressing for the mother and the family who were selected to go to Rome to have an audience with the Pope. It meant a lot to that family. I cannot understand how that happened, especially if the children's passports were all sorted because that is normally the area where there seems to be the greatest delay.