Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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586. To ask the Minister for Health if his Department is incurring any expense in 2023 for the Covid passport application. [9736/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The HSE Live service within the HSE took over responsibility for delivery of the Covid Passport/ Digital Covid Certificates (DCC) service from 24^thOctober 2022. As part of this, the HSE now manages all technical and operational aspects of the EU Digital Covid Certificates (DCC) Service Centre. The Department of Health is therefore not incurring any expense associated with the Covid Passport application service in 2023.

The HSE now have responsibility for data quality for vaccination and recovery test records to produce EU Digital Covid Certificates (DCC) and requests for DCCs are facilitated by the DCC Service Centre.

The EU Digital COVID Certificate is an EU-wide initiative designed to support safe and free movement across the EU. EU regulations require continued support and funding for systems to issue EU Digital Covid Certificates (DCC) until 30 June 2023.