Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Friday, 24 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Impact on Public Transport (Resumed)

Mr. Kenneth Spratt:

What are we doing with the passenger locator form and the follow-up, and can we do it better? The answer to the second questions is "Yes". We are moving to put the passenger locator form onto an electronic footing and, as I mentioned earlier, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer is developing that as we speak. Once we have that done, we will be far better able to identify and authenticate the people filling out the passenger locator forms. That will be really important for us in terms of the follow-up and a much more effective and robust way to follow up. We will do that by way of increasing the capacity we have working on this at the moment. It is the case that we do not have enough capacity on that, and that is well recognised and accepted. For that reason we are working with a third party with a view to standing up a call centre at least by 10 August, but we hope before then. Those are the things we are doing at the moment and which we need to do better.

As for other things we could do, my colleague, Mr. Towey, mentioned earlier that we were giving consideration to departure point testing. We are exploring that and will make a decision on it fairly soon. In addition, we would like to increase the soft pressure at the point of departure, whereby airlines at time of booking and at time of departure would ensure that people coming in from countries not on the green list would be made aware of the need for them to restrict their movements when they arrive.

Potentially, we could also do some entry screening at Dublin Airport and step up the testing we are doing there at the moment. We do have processes in place whereby somebody who is symptomatic can be and is being tested. We have random testing under way, and the level to which we would step that up is being considered as well. The things we are doing we need to do better. We also need to do more things to try to make sure we prevent the virus from being imported. I do not know whether there is anything to add to that.

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