WE WILL MISS EU TRAVEL DEADLINE, WARN MINISTERS
Serious concerns within Government that July 19 target will not be met
THERE are serious doubts in Government that the EU Digital Covid Certificate will be ready in time to allow foreign travel to start by July 19, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
In a series of briefings, ministers and senior officials admitted that ‘severe difficulties’ in getting the digital cert operational are unlikely to be overcome within a fortnight, a scenario that would leave plans for Irish holiday-makers in tatters.
The potential delay is even more embarrassing given that Ireland is the only country in the EU yet to introduce the Digital Covid Certificate, which came into effect on July 1.
And while Irish travellers have still not been given an indication of how long the application process will take to get the travel cert, visitors to Ireland from the EU
have already been arriving into the country with their passes.
The aim of the EU digital pass is to provide travellers with proof that they are fully vaccinated, received a negative test result or recovered from Covid-19 in the past six months.
But the key difficulty in getting the digital cert established here is tracking the testing of individuals. One Cabinet source said: ‘On vaccination [proof] we’ll be fine, on recovery we’ll be fine, but on testing we won’t.’
The success of the digital travel certificate not only affects travel but also how the nation emerges from lockdown. This week Tánaiste Leo Varadkar told his Fine Gael colleagues the travel certificate could be used as a Covid pass for people to access indoor hospitality next month. He said the fastest way to set up a new ‘Covidpass’ for indoor dining and other services would be to use the EU-wide cert.
However, adding to the confusion, Taoiseach Micheál Martin yesterday said ‘it’s far too early’ to say if the EU Digital Covid Certificate for travel ‘would be applied to the domestic situation’.
Those with knowledge of the rush to complete the certificate by the July 19 deadline admitted ‘severe difficulties’ are being encountered. One minister told the MoS: ‘We are having trouble developing an efficient way to check and authenticate negative tests for people.
‘We are working with the private sector to figure it out, but there are severe difficulties.’
Some senior Government officials blame the cyberattack on the Health Service Executive and Department of Health systems for the delay.
One Cabinet source said: ‘The HSE did not have that system and, while we are getting there, we are quite a distance from having the system up and running by the 19th of July.
‘We have had literally millions of people receive private tests at pharmacies, at privately run testing centres, and we have not been gathering that data. And we don’t have a system to do it.’
Another minister told the MoS: ‘We’re in big trouble on the testing aspect alright. Our track record in this country on IT systems is not good, of course. But the HSE and the Department of Health are now citing the cyberattack as a central problem.’
Ossian
Smyth, the Minister of State who is in overall charge of the Digital Covid Certificate plan, insisted yesterday that it would be up and running by July 19. Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Katie Hannon show, he said: ‘We have a public health policy not to allow non-essential international travel until the 19th of July and that’s been the plan. Believe it or not, there is a plan.’
Responding to a call by Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary to simply ‘switch the computer on’, Mr Smyth said: ‘The system is on and has issued a small number of certificates. We just haven’t issued the batch of the certificates to all the population, but we will be doing that within the coming weeks.’
He added: ‘Come the 19th of July you can use your Digital Covid Certificate, whatever that is, a vaccine cert, a test cert, a recovery cert… to travel anywhere in Europe.’
When asked to clarify Minister Smyth’s remarks on the issuing of certificates, a Government official, speaking on background, told the MoS it is only being done on ‘a trial basis’, adding it is ‘not that the thing has started or anything like that’. The official added: ‘It is very much on a trial basis. It’s very small numbers, even on a single-figure basis.’
However, independent TD Verona Murphy described the minister’s response as ‘utterly unconvincing’. She told the MoS: ‘They did not want this until September. I see no definitive timeline except that we will be the last. It does not appear to be the case that there is a plan beyond that.’
On Wednesday, every other EU state introduced the digital travel pass to allow their citizens resume non-emergency travel within the union.
At the launch of the EU travel cert, European commissioner for justice Didier Reynders singled out Ireland as being the only member state that has not been able to comply with the binding regulation to date.
The EU travel pass system is now up and running at Dublin Airport checking the Covid status of tourists arriving here from EU countries even though not a single pass has been issued to a person in Ireland.
A senior Government source told the MoS: ‘Our system can check the Covid passes of people coming here from the EU but no one seems to know when and how an Irish person can apply for one.’
Since May, the MoS has repeatedly asked when will the first of these passes be issued in Ireland; who will issue the document deemed vital in order to travel to an EU member State, and how will Irish people apply.
One Cabinet minister defended the operation, although they admitted, ‘there will be teething problems’.
The minister told the MoS: ‘I think we will be okay. It’s coming together thanks to administrative help from the Revenue Commissioners.
‘There will be teething problems for sure, like some people [not] getting theirs while
another friend has theirs. But I hope we’ll get there.’
Ongoing problems with the pass are the latest blow to the Coalition’s stuttering Covid-19 policy.
Today’s revelations come after a week in which the Government desperately tried to spin itself out of a woeful lack of preparation for the latest recommendations by the National Public Health Emergency
Team amid fears of a fourth wave of the virus.
This week ministers attempted to characterise NPHET’s advice on plans for a ‘vaccine bonus pass’ for hospitality as a ‘hand grenade’ and a ‘bolt from the blue’.
However, the MoS can confirm that this newspaper received a series of briefings last Friday from senior ministers, officials and members of NPHET where it was made clear that advanced discussions had taken place across Government about plans for a pass to allow the fully vaccinated to enter pubs and restaurants.
Ministers told the MoS there are concerns about the ‘communication
stream’ between NPHET, the Department of Health, the Department of An Taoiseach and across Government.
One Cabinet member said: ‘There have been in-depth discussions at the Department of Health about a vaccine bonus for hospitality for some time now.
‘When the spinning was coming out that people didn’t know, there are two possibilities: either they did know and there wasn’t any effort to prepare even a draft plan for hospitality that we could give to the media on Monday.
‘Or certain figures in Government did know about this but didn’t tell other figures. Either way we looked
‘There are severe difficulties’
‘We looked like a collection of fools’