Irish Passport Office

F

Flagship uberalles

Journeyman
Joined
May 2, 2003
Messages
1,502
Location
Belfast
Has any of our Irish forumites had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with this shower in the recent past?

We've applied for 3 passports at the start of March through Passport Express (:lol:). Despite this supposedly being a ten day turnaround (or slightly longer if applying for Northern Ireland) we have had no updates since this (the website tracking still shows this as received on 5th March).

They won't answer phone calls or respond to emails - pretty much the only way I will get any response appears to be rocking up to the front door and going mental.

I am travelling on the 17th of April and am pretty much going to have to cancel the whole holiday on Monday if I don't get some sort of response.

Anyone else ever have trouble?
 
That sounds excessive. If you have the tickets and go to the office you'll get them on the day.
 
SlimChance said:
That sounds excessive. If you have the tickets and go to the office you'll get them on the day.
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Problem is they already have all of the associated documentation and witnessed statements (somewhere).

I can make an appointment and go down to the Passport Office, but that seems to be only for making new applications (which I don't have the documents for) - it won't speed up the current one.

Of course, it would probably help if they would ANSWER THE FKING PHONE.
 
That's disgraceful. I got my passport in ten days two years ago no problem. How can they not have a phone query line.
 
Oh they do. At the moment, it defaults through to a recorded statement saying they are too busy and to email instead or track it through the website (which hasn't updated).

I've been sending emails for a week and a half now and also contact forms from the website. No response.

Miracle of miracles, I have just now got through to the line but am now on hold. It has only taken 2 weeks and probably a few hundred attempts.

If I get disconnected now I am jumping in the car and heading to Dublin. You'll probably see me on the news going 150mph in a Ford Mondeo ST with about half of Dundalk Garda station chasing me.
 
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that office. A friend of mine worked their for 3 months and said it was like a professional internet cafe!
 
trefflich said:
A friend of mine worked their for 3 months and said it was like a professional internet cafe!
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Not long to work there but at least an 6 extra passports got processed in that time.
 
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Belfast. The passports aren't for me, other half is from Donegal so it's for her and the two children.

Until this debacle I was planning on getting an Irish passport when my UK one runs out, as it is a fair bit cheaper. Now I know why! :)
 
Still haven't got this sorted - spoke to the useless feckers over the last few days and they still haven't progressed anything.

And to top it all off my credit card details have been stolen and someone had has themselves a little spending spree:
  • Paid a court fine in Loughborough
  • Paid for a hotel booking in Cancun
  • Paid for flights to Canada, USA and Brazil

All to the tune of about £5K.

God help the poor woman who answers the phone to me today in the passport office.
 
Is the passport office state run?

If so, no surprise.

Fire them all off and make them reapply after privatisation. Contract winners will have to constantly reach KPis or they are booted off themselves. its easy. Costs will tumble and efficiency will rocket simply because it has to

Staff will have to work rather than on facebook all day whilst your passport application gathers dust

If it is already in private hands then fire off the incompetent civil servant who allowed this to run out of control
 
Latest update: they are completely unable to tell me whether it will be available on time. The earliest it can be put on the urgent list is 3 days before travel (Monday). It should (if the documentation checks out) be ready for collection in person on Wednesday.

What I can now see happening is that I will turn up to collect the passports in person, and my fiancee's passport which was sent as supporting documentation will end up being sent back to our home address in the post, which will leave us totally fcked as we won't have it for travel.

W@nkers.
 
What I can now see happening is that I will turn up to collect the passports in person, and my fiancee's passport which was sent as supporting documentation will end up being sent back to our home address in the post, which will leave us totally fcked as we won't have it for travel.
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If that happens they should be able to issue an emergency passport with limited validity.
 
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