Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Good morning everyone and we will start our meeting now. Apologies have been received from Senators Hoey and the Black.

I will introduce our witnesses, who are going to provide an update on the roll-out of the EU digital Covid-19 certificate, DCC. They are: Ms Liz Canavan, assistant secretary general, Department of the Taoiseach; Mr. David Gilbride, head of immigration service delivery, Department of Justice; Mr. Muiris O'Connor, assistant secretary general, Department of Health; Mr. Derek Tierney, assistant secretary general Department of Health; Mr. Damien McCallion, national lead Covid-19 vaccination programme HSE; Mr. Fintan Towey, assistant secretary general, Department of Transport; and Mr. Barry Lowry, chief information officer, Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO.

Before we hear our witnesses' opening statements, I need to point out to them that there is uncertainty that parliamentary privilege will apply to their evidence from a location outside of the parliamentary precincts of Leinster House. If, therefore, they are directed by me to cease giving evidence on a particular matter, they must respect that direction.

Before I call Ms Canavan to make her opening remarks - she has five minutes in which to do so - on behalf of the members I wish to state that we have just received the 17-page document from our witnesses. It is very disrespectful to our committee members that we are only receiving this document at the last minute. It does not do justice to the information in the document and makes it very difficult for members to ask questions on matters that may already be dealt with within the document. I ask that that be noted. This is bad form, and many members have expressed dissatisfaction with receipt of this document a number of minutes before we started our official meeting. I call on Ms Canavan now to make her opening remarks.