Help! Does anyone work at Irish passport office Dublin?

[Spikester]

This is not about delay but poor service and wondering if there is a solution.

The Irish passport office have a problem with issuing my daughter with an Irish passport as she has an Indian visitors visa in her current British passport.

My adult daughter submitted her first Irish passport application in time some time ago. She currently has a British passport. About 9 years ago she visited India on a school trip. She had a short term Indian visa. This was printed/written on one page in her passport.

They are refusing to process her passport because they say they need her Indian visa. They have it - it is literally the thing in her passport. She has contacted them by phone and webchat. They will NOT listen to her.

I assume they think she is Indian and are questioning her nationality, she is obviously British and born in the UK (an Irish da).

They refuse to put her through to a manager and the complaints process is in writing and takes weeks.

I am trying to make an appointment for her in another city for the fast track to renew her British passport which she can’t get back
as they have it. She is meant to be going to Paris next week . She also needs another Indian visa soon as she is going there again to do charity work, so needs it for that as well. She is a vet.

Does anyone have knowledge of how to contact someone other than the stupid person she dealt with? Either to get her British passport back or issue the Irish one?

I would assume they want confirmation from the Indian authorities that they issued the visa contained in the passport. They need to check everything. I'm Irish, but when I applied for a new passport 15 years ago, they rang my English employer to confirm my identity. I didn't have a problem with this. They're just being thorough and doing their jobs.

But how is that relevant to getting a first Irish passport. It was a tourist visa for a school trip, nearly 10 years how on Earth could it confirm her identity.

They don’t give you paperwork for an Indian tourist visa they just put it in the passport. She was never given anything else but they won’t listen. She has also visited the USA and Japan, they are not asking for anything else for those.

That makes me think that someone has made a mistake and thinks it is something to do with permission to remain in the UK.

She is employed as a veterinary surgeon - they can easily call her company to confirm identity.

As she is applying by descent as her father is Irish and she is born in the UK I can’t see how it is relevant anyway.

They have her and her fathers birth certificates, his details and her proof of address and occupation.

I think the issue is that the Irish passport office didn’t anticipate the volume of applications coming from Britain post brexit. There’s a lot of checking involved & it’s more complicated when person wasn’t born in Ireland.

They have had it 3 months and have all the documents asked for. DH even posted it in Ireland to speed it up.

DH is Irish with an Irish passport and I am British with a British passport.

It is not due to the volume of applications but sheer incompetence.

For some reason they cannot issue it because she has an expired Indian Tourist visa in her British passport. We do not understand why and the person she spoke to seems to think she does not have a British passport - the visa is on one page in her British passport.

I think it’s likely the person dealing with it has misinterpreted what the visa represents but will not listen to an explanation nor let her speak to someone more senior. They kept asking her for her ‘Indian visa’ and are unable to grasp that the visa is in the passport. Incidentally it was a school trip nearly 10 years ago.

Anyway she has had to report her British passport as lost and get another one issued. She has travel planned next week and more importantly a trip in a couple of months with a veterinary charity in India.

She has had visas and stamps for other countries, including USA and Japan so frankly it seems there is a racist element here.

You cd try emailing the Min for Foreign Affairs outlining your concerns. Good luck.

Thanks @Mitsouko67 I used to deal with ministerial complaints in the UK and was itching to, but DD wants to deal with it differently and complain when it’s all sorted out.

Anyway, DH drove 3 hours each way to drop off her application for her UK passport so hopefully she will be able to still go abroad next week.

I am applying for another EU country’s passport, where my mum comes from, which is a hoop jumping process and really expensive. I thought the Irish one was cheap and easy in comparison. So it’s a pity it’s not.

I imagine it comes down to staff not being trained properly. I really hope it’s not racism.