I understand there are four Departments and two agencies working on the production of the appropriate software for the digital green certificate, which I know the Taoiseach has committed will be ready for the 19th of this month. Late last night it was suggested that the domestic certification for indoor dining could be paper-based. Surely the State will be in a position to use what it has learned from the process of producing the app for the digital green certificate to apply domestically in some way, shape or form rather than have an entirely paper-based system. Given we are vaccinating 1 million people per month in addition to the millions already vaccinated, it seems particularly odd that we are going to be operating a purely paper-based system for domestic certification, if that is what the Government intends to pursue.

In the first instance, we must be careful of pre-empting the outcome of the discussions between the hospitality sector and the Government and conflating the two issues in terms of travel and the digital Covid certificate. The latter has taken considerable work and has presented many challenges given the various sources of information – vaccination, disease recovery and PCR testing, which are three aspects of the travel certificate. That said, we are on track in terms of bringing that in for the 19th in line with the European Union framework for travel.

Up to recently, the Government position was we did not want to utilise vaccination certificates for access purposes to domestic facilities or amenities. The NPHET advice has been clear in respect of indoor hospitality and indoor dining. Its belief is that fully vaccinated people or those who have recovered from Covid represent the best and safest way of facilitating the reopening.

I thank the Taoiseach. The time is up.

The Government is now examining that with the industry as to how best we can operationalise it.