Nearly 200,000 UK citizens applied for an Irish passport last year

2018 was a record-breaking year for applications

Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said that 2018 was a record-breaking year for Irish passport applications with almost 200,000 applications received from the UK alone.

In terms of the total number of applications received this year by the Passport Service, 84,855 were from Northern Ireland and 98,544 applications were received from Great Britain.

That represents 22% of all Irish passport applications for 2018.

To be more specific, the number of applications from England, Scotland and Wales increased by more than a fifth compared to 2017.

Outside of the UK, New York was the Irish consulate to receive the most amount of passport applications. This was followed by Canberra, Pretoria, San Francisco and Ottawa.

A total of 822,581 passports were issued - this is a record amount.

Minister Coveney said: “The success of the online passport renewal service was recognised during the year at the CX Impact Awards, where it won the Impact in Digital award, and was ranked as the top Irish public sector organisation in terms of customer experience for the third year in a row.It is important that the Passport Service continues to use technology in order to gain efficiencies and deliver the best possible service to the citizen."