Concerns have been raised that a purely paper-based certification system will be used for those who are vaccinated against Covid-19 to access indoor dining.
As discussions continue between Government and the hospitality sector on how to safely resume indoor dining, suggestions have been made that people who do not have smart phones will get a paper-based Covid pass.
Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell pointed to such proposals late on Monday night that "domestic certification for indoor dining could be paper based" and raised concerns about its use.
But Taoiseach Micheál Martin cautioned against pre-empting the outcome of discussions and said the Government was considering “how best to operationalise” the certification system for indoor dining.
Raising the issue in the Dáil, Mr Farrell pointed to the work by four Government departments and two agencies on the production of the “appropriate software” for the digital green certificate, which is due to be rolled out in Ireland on July 19th to allow non-essential travel within the EU for the fully vaccinated, those who have recovered from Covid-19, or who have received a negative PCR test.
‘Seems odd’
The Dublin Fingal TD said it “seems particularly odd that we are going to be operating a purely paper-based system for domestic certification if that is what Government intends to propose”.
Mr Farrell said “surely the State would be in the position to use what it has learned from the process of using the App for the Digital green Certificate to apply domestically in some way shape or form rather than an entirely paper-based system, given we are vaccinating a million people a month”, along with those already vaccinated.
Mr Martin said, however, that they needed to be “careful of pre-empting the outcome of discussions between the hospitality sector and the Government”.
He also cautioned against “conflating the two issues of travel and the Digital Covid Certification which has taken considerable work and presented many, many challenges given the different sources of information in terms of vaccination”, disease recovery and PCR tests.
‘On track’
The Taoiseach reiterated that “we are on track in terms of bringing that in from July 19th in line with the EU framework for travel”.
He added that “up to quite recently the Government position was we didn’t want to utilise vaccination certificates for access purposes to domestic facilities and amenities”.
But he said the National Public Health Emergency Team’s advice had been clear that the best and safest way for indoor dining to open was making it available to those who were fully vaccinated against the virus.
“The Government is examining that with the industry how best we can operationalise it,” he said.
