{"id":588427,"date":"2026-08-10T00:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T00:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/588427\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T00:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T00:30:09","slug":"over-half-a-million-irish-passports-issued-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/588427\/","title":{"rendered":"Over half a million Irish passports issued this year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Holidaymakers have been urged to check their passport expiry dates to ensure travel plans go smoothly during the remainder of the busy summer season.<\/p>\n<p>Figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs showed over half a million Irish passports were issued in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>On the island of Ireland, 367,471 passports were issued in total.<\/p>\n<p>Over 50,000 passports were issued in the six counties of Northern Ireland, of which Antrim, on 17,986, saw the third-highest figure across all 32 counties.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in Northern Ireland, 13,004 passports were issued in Down, 8,019 in Derry, 5,769 in Tyrone, 5,021 in Armagh and 1,935 in Fermanagh.<\/p>\n<p>The county with the most passports distributed between January and June was Dublin on 93,223, followed by Cork on 35,257.<\/p>\n<p>Other counties with over 10,000 passports issued included Kildare at 17,571, Galway, 16,543, Meath, 14,774, Limerick, 12,524, and Wicklow, 10,736.<\/p>\n<p>Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee appealed to Irish citizens to check that their passports are in date before making any travel plans.<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8220;Over half a million passports were issued in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our passport service is world class and processes applications rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To avoid turning up at the airport with an out-of-date passport, please check your passport is in date well in advance of your departure date and ideally before you book your flights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ms McEntee said the quickest and easiest way to renew or apply for a passport was through the passport online service.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Passport online is available to 100% of citizens worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In addition, anyone applying for a passport since the end of June this year will receive the newly designed passport book and card,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/ireland\/2026\/0626\/1580365-new-passport\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wolfhound features on new &#8216;unmistakably Irish&#8217; passport<\/a><\/p>\n<p>County-by-county figures for passports issued between 1 January and 30 June 2026:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"counties where passports were issued\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0024d158-614.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Counties where passports were issued \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0024d159-614.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holidaymakers have been urged to check their passport expiry dates to ensure travel plans go smoothly during the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-588427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}