To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord Malloch-Brown on 10 March (WA 236–37) concerning passports issued in the Republic of Ireland, in what form the records of applications for British passports received at the British embassy in Dublin are held; who calculated that the cost of providing the information would be disproportionate; what is that cost; and on what basis it was calculated. [HL2140]

The records of passport applications received at our embassy in Dublin are held in paper form and also on the electronic passport issuing system.

The electronic system is not configured to calculate the number of people with addresses in the Republic of Ireland granted British passports, as requested by the noble Lord in his earlier Question. This would have to be done manually by checking all 53,222 of the paper applications for British passports issued by our embassy in Dublin over the past five years.

The disproportionate cost threshold is set at £700. Consular Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office assessed that the additional work required to manually search for this information would breach this threshold.