A record number of Irish passports have been issued this year, with 1,080,000 distributed.
The Irish Passport Service announced in November that it had reached the one-million mark in November, breaking the previous record of 935,000 in 2019.
The number of first-time passport applications from Northern Ireland and Britain was 100,000, out of more than 1.15 million total applications received.
Applications were also received from the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany and South Africa.
Meanwhile, the Irish Passport Service said the most popular surname worldwide was Murphy and the most popular baby girls’ names were Emily, Fiadh and Lily, while Noah, Jack and James topped the baby boys’ list.
The oldest applicant was 102 and the youngest only three days old.
August was the busiest month for Customer Service Hub phone calls, with more than 41,000 calls handled. July was the busiest month for the WebChat service, with more than 23,000 chats handled.
Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin spoke on the “extraordinary volumes of applications”.
“This was a direct result of pent-up demand due to disruptions to travel throughout 2020 and 2021,” he said, referring to the events surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The government made significant investment over the year to scale up services to meet this demand.”
He added that the Passport Service was set to issue a little under 1.1 million passports by the end of the year.
“Over 99 per cent of all online renewal applications and paper applications are issuing within the standard turnaround times,” Mr Martin said.
He said that the service was expecting another busy year in 2023.
“I want to express my thanks to the staff in the Passport Service who responded to the challenges of 2022 by demonstrating great diligence and resilience,” Mr Martin said.
“The historic achievement of over one million passports issued in a calendar year is down to their commitment to public service and hard work.
“My department will continue to work to ensure that our services meet the needs of our citizens in 2023.”
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