Mr. Niall Burgess:

I welcome this opportunity to meet the committee today and to outline the contribution of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the Covid-19 response. This response has extended from consular support to assistance in the wider procurement efforts, the secondment of a significant number of staff to other essential services, the mitigation of some of the global impacts of the pandemic, the maintenance of a global mission network and, of course, the maintenance of other ongoing essential work.

With the permission of the Chairman, I would like first to address the actual and likely impact of travel restrictions on those wishing to enter the State. As this Department’s particular responsibility rests with the protection and care of Irish citizens overseas, I will focus my comments on the challenges faced by citizens seeking to return to the State.

Our consular directorate, in close co-operation with our network of embassies and consulates overseas, has been assisting citizens affected by Covid-19 pandemic since the virus first emerged in China in January. By mid-February, the pandemic was spreading rapidly around the world and, as a result, countries were imposing internal and international restrictions on travel, shutting down public spaces, suspending flights and closing airspace, with an increasing number of our citizens facing the prospect of being stranded abroad. In response, we activated a dedicated helpline to provide direct support and advice. Drawing on staff redeployed from across the Department and from the Passport Office, the crisis centre scaled up quickly to operate on a 24-7 basis, receiving up to 2,000 calls per day. By the end of May, the centre had handled more than 20,000 contacts from Irish citizens at home and abroad.

The first repatriations we assisted with were from Wuhan, China, in late January, followed by assistance to citizens stranded on cruise ships in Japan and Cambodia. To date, we have advised and assisted well over 6,000 citizens in returning home from 129 countries. This has included providing information about available routes and connections, ensuring seats on commercial flights wherever possible and negotiating places on flights chartered by the UK, EU and other like-minded partners. In a few exceptional cases – where there were significant groups of Irish citizens with no alternative options to leave and in circumstances that made them particularly vulnerable - we chartered planes ourselves, bringing back citizens from Peru, India and Nigeria.

In all operations, we have prioritised public health considerations, liaising closely with the Department of Health, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, the HSE and the Dublin Airport Authority.

Our consular directorate has also been working closely with our embassies and consulates on complicated and often very distressing issues such as hospitalisations and deaths overseas, repatriation of remains, and the treatment of prisoners in the context of Covid-19.

Although great progress has been achieved in responding to the many consular challenges posed by Covid-19, this operation is far from over. At present, we are aware of more than 1,000 citizens dispersed across many countries, some in remote locations, with an interest in returning home and we are working with them to provide advice and help them with access to essential local services. The potential future challenges which our citizens’ will face will depend to a large extent on the evolution of the pandemic over the coming months. In the meantime, we have established a dedicated Covid-19 response fund for Irish communities abroad designed to protect the elderly, to provide mental health supports and to meet the needs of those made newly vulnerable by the pandemic.

As regards outward travel, since mid-March the Government has advised against all non-essential travel overseas and the security status assigned to all countries was upgraded to reflect this advice. We continue to advise against all non-essential travel.

As I am sharing time with colleagues from the Department of Health today, I should mention the close working relationship we have in addressing this crisis. In that context, for example, we have seconded several staff from the Passport Office to the HSE to assist with contact tracing.

In our response to Covid-19, we are keenly aware that we must consider the shared geography of the island of Ireland and the cross-border mobility of people through close and ongoing contact, both North-South and east-west. The Government is, therefore, engaged in co-operation with the Northern Ireland Executive and the British Government with the intention of delivering an effective response to the threat of Covid-19 on behalf of all the people of this island. The Irish Government’s roadmap to ease the Covid-19 restrictions, published on 1 May, acknowledges the need to continue to work intensively on our approach to travel restrictions and controls at ports and airports and on the need for co-operation with Northern Ireland, the UK and our EU partners.

Throughout this crisis, we have also been clear on the need to ensure that our global network of embassies and consulates remains operational to deliver essential services. All 90 Irish missions across our network have continued to work, notwithstanding significant challenges. This has facilitated essential business, including ongoing EU business and the management of Brexit. It has also facilitated extensive reporting on the progress and impact of the disease globally and the measures taken by other governments to address the pandemic and the challenges of economic recovery as an input to policymaking at home. It has supported our efforts to source and ship critical medical supplies for the Covid-19 response. Our embassies in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Berlin and a small team in the Department here in Dublin have been working closely with IDA Ireland, the HSE-----