The Director of Public Prosecutions will decide if a social welfare civil servant should face criminal charges over allegedly supplying fake papers to foreigners seeking passports illegally.

Senior sources have told the Irish Daily Mail the ‘significant national security breach’ has caused ‘major consternation’ at Government level, and gardaí say the public servant should be charged.

It is feared the integrity of Irish passports may be compromised; relations with other countries may be affected if our passports are used to gain access there; and there is a potential terrorism link.

Three Chinese and two Mongolian nationals have already been in court, charged with passport offences. They are believed to have received false documents from the civil servant.

However, these are considered ‘small fry’ as investigating gardaí have completed a probe into the civil servant and the file is to be sent to the DPP this week, with detectives recommending charges against the man, aged in his 40s, according to sources.

Last September, the Dublin-based civil servant was arrested and quizzed for several hours by detectives.

A source revealed: ‘The matter is extremely serious. We are dealing with a situation where the integrity of Irish passports have now been compromised. Gardaí are trying to establish how widespread this situation was, how many false naturalisation certificates this man sold on.

‘He has compromised sensitive State information and is an employee of the State.

‘It is more than just dodgy passports, there are terrorism matters to be considered, not to mention foreign nationals potentially using this situation to gain access to the US and other countries.’

Two Chinese women were arrested in Dublin on the same day as the civil servant last September. Several other arrests of Chinese and Mongolian nationals followed in the coming months.

In a separate case with some similarities, a retired garda was arrested in December and stands accused of taking bribes to give ‘several hundred’ foreign nationals permission to stay in Ireland illegally.

The Mail exclusively revealed the high-level investigation in August, which culminated in the suspect’s arrest on December 11. In a statement in December, Garda headquarters confirmed that detectives have arrested the chief suspect.

It said: ‘Gardaí from the Roscommon/Longford Division investigating a number of immigration irregularities at a Garda station in the then Western Region… have arrested a male in his 60s in connection with this The arrested man was a serving member of An Garda Síochána but has since retired.

‘He is currently detained at a Garda station in the midlands area under the provisions of Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984.’ In mid-August, the Mail revealed that a major corruption investigation was underway, after the garda allegedly took bribes to give ‘several hundred’ foreign nationals permission to stay in Ireland illegally.

Up to 800 men and women from Pakistan and India paid €10,000 each to have the garda stamp a form stating they had shown the necessary documents granting them the right to work here and claim benefits, it is alleged.

Officers believe the garda was in league with a Pakistani ‘fixer’.

The Pakistani man organised busloads of his fellow countrymen to travel to the garda’s station, where the officer would stamp the documents, it is alleged.