By Georgina Brennan

IN order to comply with the U.S. demands that all visa waiver country passports be biometric, Ireland will introduce biometric passports in October. But under a new European Directive Ireland has been given three years to introduce fingerprints on passports also.

All Irish passports will have to include fingerprints from June 2009 under new measures agreed by the European Commission last week. The measures will also require all newly-issued passports across the EU to feature an electronic chip containing digital pictures, names and dates of birth from August of this year.

The EU measures form part of efforts to tackle international terrorism.

The Irish government had already announced plans to introduce such passports in October because the U.S. had already requested that all countries who are part of the visa waiver program, present biometric passports at U.S. borders.

There are 28 countries around the world in the program that allows their citizens to come to the U.S. for a period of 90 days without a visa. Often called the holiday visa, the waiver program up until now was not enabled for tracking.

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. has announced its desire to keep track of everyone entering and leaving the U.S.