Does anyone work in the passport office in Dublin? Urgent query

[Acaseofyou80]

My parents (both mid/late 70s) applied for Irish passports the first week of April. It’s their first passports since the early 1970s. We have our first ever family holiday (17 of us) booked for this Wednesday 15th July and their passports have still not arrived.
Is there any hope?
There was a slight delay at the start of this process when the office couldn’t contact their witness. So my parents had to resubmit their applications and did so straight away. That was the only issue and it was rectified straight away.
We are tracking online constantly. The Passports were sent to print last Thursday morning (9th July)
We have rang them every day. Our local MP has rang them every day to please our case. They have noted our dates of travel. Does this mean anything? Does anyone know if this means they are more likely to dispatch the day before if they have noted the date??
We are beyond desperate.

I got my passport renewed within 10 days, so once its at print it should be quick. The longer bit will be id verification, as such a long gap is treated like a first time application.
Fingers crossed for you.

not sure what reassurance you will get from AIBU. presumably you have phoned them, what do they say?

Posted in AIBU for traffic. On the phone they say it’s only being held up due to high volume of applications.

A friend of mine was really late applying (first Irish passport) and also involved her mp etc.
The week before she was due to fly they said she hadn't filled the form out properly.
She redone the form and passport arrived the day before she was due to fly.
That was start of July so hopefully you'll get them

This is honestly what I was hoping someone would say! I pray we get the same outcome 🙏🏻 thank you for your reply.

Not the reassurance you want to hear but my nieces passport was applied for begging of April, was ment to be issued June 13th. Flight booked for June 30th. Called and they noted travel dates but said they are runing at least 2 weeks behind and dates are only an estimate. Flight was missed and passport still hasnt came!

There also nothing that can be done to speed it up as its a 1st time passport and not a renewal

YABU.

You’re told very clearly when applying for a passport to not book travel until it comes back. I’m unsure why your MP is getting involved?

Is there anyway of travelling there to collect them?
That’s a ridiculous amount of time

We asked this early on - the answer was no. They don’t let you collect anymore.

I really hope it arrives in time, but I think now is the time to start making contingency plans.

It's not a situation that is "beyond desperate" at all - arrange for your parents flights to be pushed back a few days, then if the passports arrive they can still enjoy most of the holiday with you.

If the passports don't arrive in time, then there will be other times for a holiday even if right now this situation is inconvenient.

Fingers crossed for the post tomorrow!

My son applied for his first (adult) passport at the end of April & still no sign of it. Good luck Op hope it comes in time.

I note you say MP rather than TD...if you're applying from the UK it will take longer to arrive even when printed, sorry.

Yes I'm confused by that too.

Yes I think you are right.
this is our plan b. My parents are elderly and don’t want to fly alone. But that will be a problem we will sort out if needs be.
Thank you.

Are you in the northern Ireland or on the 'mainland' UK? I think the Irish post might be reliably faster than UK post at the moment. So potentially if the passports were posted tomorrow they might reach an Irish address by Wednesday (not sure about NI but I would have thought a good chance also).
But realistically, if you are in mainland UK it's unlikely you will have them by Wednesday if the haven't been posted from Dublin by now.

It's very disappointing for your parents and I would have thought an April application would have been in good time. But you should probably be making contingency plans now. Would they be able to book flights and travel as soon as the passports arrive?

We live in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We have MPs not TDs.

We are in Belfast NI. Once collected by Royal Mail we can collect directly from them. So technically still possible.

Well the bank holiday today in NI won't have helped with Royal Mail.

It's a bit late for you OP but the online chat is actually pretty good as is phoning the office. Having applied in April I would say chasing needed to start a bit earlier or a British passport application could have been done (assuming eligible) when it start e getting very close to travel dates but there is still some hope.

I would check tomorrow and start looking at alternative flights for your parents (but don't book until passports in hands). If they allow plenty of time I find most airport and airline staff as well as the general public are helpful if they are a bit unsure flying without other family members around.

Please update if they arrive tomorrow!aye male sure your parents are all packed etc so they can come whenever it is, if they're going to be flustered make everything as smooth as possible.

Thank you for this kind reply.

yes the bank holiday just added to the Fun!

The UK passport was our fail safe. We applied for the one week application but didn’t know that they weren’t applicable as their last passport was pre 2001 (it was in fact 1970!) so that fail safe failed unfortunately.

I know this is stressful, but could you call your MPs office off?

Having them call every day hasn't and won't make a blind bit of difference- other than taking up staff resources to reply which could otherwise be spent on processing.

Once DD’s went to print it was dispatched later that day (Tuesday) and arrived to our home in Belfast on the Friday via Royal Mail. I wonder whether the tracking information hasn’t been put in correctly as there’s no reason for them to delay sending once printed. On the northern side however I’m sure that the bank holiday weekend won’t have done you any favours re: postage times.…

Hoping the passports have arrived by now so your parents can join you OP.

We had a big bundle of post arrive today after nothing since last week due to the 12th holidays so hopefully it has arrived by now. I hope your parents haven't had what happened to me - I sent the application in early March, got the notification the passport was going to print end of April but then an email to say it was held back because the identity and consent form was 'not acceptable'. We thought we had been thorough with the witness form and making sure all the dates were correct/same day - but it turned out we forgot to fill in the date in the box at the very top of the witness countersign form. I had to get the witness to re-sign the form and it took a further two months for the passport to actually arrive! Very annoying, had it not arrived at the end of June I was going to have to renew British passport instead which would be £66 instead of €20 and is basically only useful for 4 years when you factor in the months needed at the end and the renewal time. (Edit - this was for a child passport)