People are being asked to avoid calling the helpline unless they’re travelling in the next 10 days.
Less than one in 10 calls to Ireland’s EU Digital Covid Certificate helpline have been successfully resolved.
According to Assistant General Secretary at the Department of the Taoiseach, Liz Canavan, only 7% of the calls made to the helpline on Monday and Tuesday were successfuly processed.
Speaking at the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday morning, Canavan told the committee that just 2,826 calls had been resolved of the 34,000 calls made on Tuesday and 6,000 made the day before.
Roughly 7,500 of the 1.1 million emailed Digital Certs and 7,920 of the 500,000 physical certs have either not been delivered correctly or have bounced back since the rollout began earlier this month.
The EU Digital Covid Cert will allow people who are fully vaccinated, recently recovered, or with recent negative PCR tests to travel through Europe.
The certs will also be required for dining indoors throughout the country as of Monday.
Canavan told the committee that the demand “far exceeds” the estimates for the call centre. She also urged people not to call the helpline unless they have plans to travel over the coming 10 days.
“This far exceeds estimates of call centre demand based on an assessment of travel bookings and survey or insights data on travel intentions that Government or industry have access to,” she said.
Canavan also confirmed that recovery certs for people who have recently recovered from Covid-19 can’t be obtained through the helpline, with a new online form set to be created in the coming week.
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