New Irish passport cards available this year
A brand new passport card will be made available to Irish people in July.
The card will make travelling within the European Union easier as well as being useful for nights out, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan said: “The passport card will be particularly useful for young people who use their passport booklet as identification, especially on nights out.”
The card is a credit-card sized form of ID, meaning it will easily fit into our wallets and purses which will hopefully decrease the number of lost passports!
It sounds like the blind panic of convincing ourselves we’ve lost our passports after a night out on the town may be a thing of the past as the minister says that he has often been concerned with his own children bringing theirs out: “As a father I have often felt concern about the impracticality of the passport booklet as a means of identification for young people on nights out and this new card will be a far more practical option.”
The new card is the first of its kind in the world. Being valid for five years and costing €35 when it is launched in July, people can apply either online or through an app that has been set up for the new initiative.
