Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 21 July 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Update on the Roll-out of the EU Digital Covid-19 Certificate

Ms Elizabeth Canavan:

Mr. Tierney may be able to add a bit more information about what we do in the call centre. We have agreed with the provider that we will review on a daily basis, and even during the day, what the level of demand is and how best to configure our teams in terms of the different types of queries that are arising so that we can filter them and put the right number of operators on the different types of calls. We have only had a couple of days so we are analysing that as we go, but it will change. There is no doubt that people are understandably a bit anxious if they get a State document and something on it is not correct or if they are travelling or perhaps they are calling because they worry about using it in another context in the coming weeks. If people have not received their certificate yet, we urge them not to panic because certificates are still being issued. We ask people to check the website and over the coming days, unless they have an urgent need, they should leave the lines free for people who are travelling urgently and who need to get their certificate regenerated or to receive it. We will do our utmost to turn those around as quickly as possible. We would like to get to a more steady state, but we do understand that people are anxious. We are urging them not to panic. We have a very good system for turnaround so unless a person has an immediate need in the next five to ten days we say people should not panic, things will settle down, we will continue to look at what is coming through in the call centre, reconfigure on that basis and we will have the online portal which will again draw people who are looking for recovery certificates away from the call centre. That is our intention. Perhaps Mr. Tierney could add something else to that.

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