A former worker at the Passport Office has been jailed for two years for processing passports for people who weren’t entitled to them.

Barry Kindregan of Downside Heights, Skerries in Dublin was paid thousands of euro to provide the passports between 2012 and 2013.

Sometime in August 2012, a colleague asked Barry Kindregan for advice on getting Irish passports for some people in South Africa.

They weren’t entitled to them, but Kindregan agreed to process the applications after being offered €2,500 per passport.

He was never paid for the first two passports, but later admitted processing another five, for which he was paid €5k each.

He used the log-in details of fellow workers at various stages of the process and put on gloves while affixing numbers to the applications.

Gardai accepted he was used by his colleague, but Judge Melanie Greally noted he also played a “central and pivotal” role in the crime.

She described his failure to find out who the passports were for as “reckless” and something that could have had wider implications for the public.

She said he couldn’t avoid a custodial sentence for the considerable breach of trust and jailed him for two years.