Red Tape

Three weeks ago we got a lovely new son. We have seen him every day and I can warrant that he is alive and that he is lovely and perfect and a wholesome bundle of burpy, farty fun! The offices of this fine state of ours require a little more proof however. Our experience of the red tape began in the hospital.

A very grumpy lady stormed into the room and took a whole load of details. The usual, dates of birth, names, our names, our mothers' maiden names, addresses and general stuff. Her job, her only job, her one and only job, is to record these details from all new mothers and send them to the Registrar's office. This process takes two weeks and the lady told us that we shouldn't try and do anything further for at least two weeks, did you hear me? Two weeks.

We thanked the nice lady, she left. We got on with bringing up our little man and waited patiently, for fourteen days.

I don't really know why we couldn't have put the details into a computer and had a doctor sign off on the fact that there actually was a child. It would certainly save a salary or two. Anyway, I traveled to the Registrar's Office in Lombard St. checked in and waited. The group of people in that room was a perfect snap-shot of this country right now. There was a family with three children, the mother was on the phone constantly chasing job applications. An African mother consoled her three year-old while some Irish young mothers compared notes and buggy models. The couple of Eastern European families over by the other wall, were calmly dealing with their very well behaved kids.

The doors opened and discharged the newly registered parents, and the queue moved along by one. I was impressed at how many people had all of the information required. You have to have proof of address, PPS numbers and marriage certificates if married outside Ireland. Not one person was turned away for not having the correct documentation. My name was called and I was brought into a small room with a computer and a long haired gentleman. He stoically took all of the details again and cross checked them against my forms, computer records and his own eyes. He pronounced that all was in order. I signed my name on a digital pad and he pressed print. Two minutes and sixteen euro later, I held two Birth Certificates for Max. It used to be that the lady in the Hospital did all that on paper and sent the details at the end of the month to the Registrar. Now the lady in the hospital could do it on a tablet PC and print and email it all off before she left the room. I'm sure having that power would make her far less grumpy.

The following day the State had gotten around to issuing him with a PPS number and now the fun really started. Now we could apply for the local National Schools, we did that. Now we could start the next step on the process, we had done the domestic, now lets try the foreign.

Passports are still the golden ticket when moving countries and we might travel this summer so Max needs a passport. That's easy enough with a Birth Certificate, a PPS Number and a friendly Garda who can sign off on it all.

The tricky bit is the passport photo. The conditions are strict. Neutral white background, no limbs in the picture, both ears in the picture, eyes open and looking directly at the camera. To get a 3 week old to achieve this is no easy task. We laid Max out on a rug and started snapping. I held the child, Ciara pressed the shutter button and I whipped away my hands at the last minute. It took sixty five shots to get it right and I think a decent bout of wind helped us no end. Thank god he gets a new passport in three years. His future self will have changed so much :-)

A quick email of the photo off to Cons Cameras in town, and the passport versions were collected the following afternoon. It's late, I'm off to the passport office tomorrow and I will wrap up this post here. Beware red tape and hope that the passport office like the photos as much as we do!