The Passport Service offices in Dublin and Cork have processed over 9,000 urgent appointments to date in 2022. File picture

A new passport printer for Cork would cost between €5m and €6m to install and €600,000 a year to run, the Department of Foreign Affairs has told an Oireachtas committee.

All passport printing is done in Dublin, but repeated calls have been made for a second printer to be installed in Cork following large backlogs after the pandemic travel restrictions were lifted. 

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said in June that a second printer was largely unnecessary due to the easing of that backlog.

The Dáil's public accounts committee asked the Department of Foreign Affairs before the Oireachtas recess for an outline of what such a move might cost. 

The return correspondence by the department, seen by the Irish Examiner , tells the committee the Passport Service estimates the initial capital cost of purchasing and installing a new "high-security passport printing machine, automated mailing despatch machine, and related facilities to be between €5m and €6m".

It said that while the machines themselves will cost approximately €3m, the infrastructure required to install and operate these machines "are considerable and include structural work to the building in which they are to be located such as anti-vibration reinforced concrete flooring, the construction of a secure stock room with a vault, and a separate plant room for the chiller, compressor, and chalk filter, as well as plumbing, draining, and duct work".

The machines also need what is described as "a sophisticated cooling system" as they must operate in an air-controlled environment.

"Due to the specialised nature of these industrial machines, spare parts must also be purchased in advance and kept on-hand so that any downtime is limited when or if the machines experience a fault. The installation of the machines and provision of the related infrastructure is estimated to cost an additional €2m."

On top of the capital investment, the "highly sophisticated" machines require expert engineers to be on-site while they are in operation to maintain and service the machines and repair them when necessary. 

The annual cost of operating and maintaining the printers is estimated to be €600,000 per year. 

The service also says that the justification for such an outlay may not be necessary as urgent appointments make up a tiny fraction of those obtaining or renewing passports yearly.

"In the relatively small number of cases where citizens need to travel urgently and do not have a valid passport, the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork offer an urgent appointment service for passport renewal. 

"The Passport Service offices in Dublin and Cork have processed over 9,000 urgent appointments to date in 2022. These urgent appointment applications represent just 1% of the total 860,000 applications received by the Passport Service since January of this year."

Current turnaround times for first-time applications are around 25 days — down from 40 days due to what the department called "significant investment" — with simple renewals running at 10 days. The Post Passport system, renamed from Passport Express, is currently at around eight weeks.

"The Passport Service is working to further reduce this turnaround time to 20 working days," it said.

Read MoreNumber of complaints about the passport office soar as application figures increase

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