As the year comes to a close, the total number of passports issued in 2022 is now 1,080,000, breaking the previous annual record for the Irish Passport Service.
Earlier this year on 1 November, the Passport Service announced it had reached the millionth mark after an extremely busy year, which saw record numbers of citizens applying for passports post-pandemic. The previous all-time high was 935,000 passports in 2019.
The number of first-time passport applications from Northern Ireland and Great Britain was 100,000 out of over 1.15 million total applications received this year.
Outside of applications from the island of Ireland and from Great Britain, most online applications came from the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, and South Africa.
This year’s 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 was just 3 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 over 23,000 chats handled.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, said that the extraordinary volumes of applications received was a direct result of pent-up demand due to the disruption to travel in 2020 and 2021.
In a statement, Mr. Martin said that over 99% of all online renewal applications and paper applications were issued within the standard turnaround times.
He said 2023 is expected to be another busy year for the Passport Service.