Birth registration now taking 12 weeks in Ireland meaning further passport delays

The HSE has confirmed a 12-week wait for birth registration in the east of the country.

It is believed new parents are waiting nearly three months to register the birth of their babies. Parents in Wicklow, Dublin, and Kildare are most affected by this issue. “At present, there is a waiting time of up to 12 weeks for birth registrations to be processed. We appreciate that this situation has resulted in an increased challenge for many people," the HSE told The Irish Times. It is believed the delay is a result of the HSE cyberattack, which occurred in May this year. The HSE has hired additional staff and civil registration staff is working overtime to resolve the issue. Staff “are working hard to get through any resulting backlog as quickly as possible”. The delay has resulted in further passport delays for newborns. Parents are currently waiting months for their child's passport, with some even experiencing delays since 2020. One mum recently admitted how stressful and emotionally draining the situation was. She explained that she was waiting over six months for her child's passport to arrive so they could travel home to Slovakia to visit her family. "I applied on 23rd April but had to apply again because when the passport office rang the Garda station, Jake’s passport wasn’t in their logbook so I had to redo it all over again but because I sent all of the documents to the passport office, my passport, my husband’s passport and Jake’s birth certificate I couldn’t apply again. "I rang the Garda station and they told me that they did have it in their logbook and then they told me to ring the passport office, but I couldn’t get them, I was ringing them for weeks every single day." It is believed both Brexit and the pandemic have caused the backlog to worsen.