Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our guests and I also thank all of the people involved in the Government Departments and in the HSE for the work that has been done in trying to meet the timelines involved. I am aware that there are many challenges, but there are also concerns among member of the general public.

I will open up by commenting on the issue of the call helpline. It just does not appear to be working. It does not seem to be able to deal with the volume of callers. Was any consideration give to whether this could be done by email rather than by having people waiting on calls? My office in Cork has been contacted by people who were waiting on the phone for two and a half hours and who still did not get an answer. Can we look at a better system rather than people having to wait for two hours on the phone?

In media coverage this morning, we heard of the people who had arrived in Malta and who are now required to go into quarantine, a matter to which Ms Canavan referred. They had cards proving vaccination, but that was not acceptable in Malta. What can be done to deal with that issue via diplomatic channels? Do we have someone on the ground in Malta to deal with the challenges involved? It must be extremely difficult for a family to arrive there and find that they are all obliged to quarantine for the next ten or 14 days.

The committee has received correspondence on the breach of the whole issue of the fundamental rights, the infringement of rights, and what is contained in the app. Perhaps Ms Canavan or one of her officials will go through that for us. The correspondent sent a very detailed letter. The civil liberties group raised a lot of issues, namely that we are not complying with people's personal rights with regard to the data being stored on the app. Maybe the witness will start with those three questions.