EU travel pass will not be delayed by HSE cyberattack - minister

EU travel pass will not be delayed by HSE cyberattack - minister

The digital green pass would speed up the time at the airport and would involve a bar code. Pre-registration seemed to be the “smarter way to do it” Ossian Smyth added.

Minister of State for Communications, Ossian Smyth has denied there will be any delays in the issuing of the EU’s digital green pass once it is approved by EU leaders.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show, Mr Smyth said it was reasonable to speculate that there could be delays because HSE staff were engaged in returning vital systems following the recent cyber attack.

However, the data involved would come from the vaccination programme which had not been affected by the cyberattack, he said.

A pilot programme for a digital cert has been in operation in Ireland since earlier this year, he said, so it could be rolled out within a week of the legislation being approved by the EU.

Under the digital pass system proof of vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test or a record of recovery from Covid could be required by other countries, he explained.

The digital cert would be a much more reliable system than the current system for people arriving into Ireland who must present documentary evidence that they have had a negative test result.

Such documents could be fraudulent, he warned. They were issued by private companies and laboratories and it was not always possible to verify their veracity.

Mr Smyth said that while some HSE IT staff had been diverted to assist in getting systems back online, he did not anticipate that there would be delays and he expected Ireland to be “ahead of the pack” because of the pilot programme.

“We will be ready within a week of the EU legislation.” 

Mr Smyth said it was reasonable to speculate that there could be delays because HSE staff were engaged in returning vital systems following the recent cyber attack.
Mr Smyth said it was reasonable to speculate that there could be delays because HSE staff were engaged in returning vital systems following the recent cyber attack.

The digital green pass would speed up the time at the airport and would involve a bar code. Pre-registration seemed to be the “smarter way to do it” he added.

On the issue of patient data being “dumped” on the web, Mr Smyth said he did not believe it had happened yet and that recent reports of calls to people were not necessarily connected, though it was natural for people to “connect” that they were.

The Garda’s National Cyber Crime Bureau would be following up such reports, he said, but to date, he did not think there was any evidence of a connection, but it certainly was a possibility.

The criminals involved were extortionists and they would come under pressure from international agencies such as the FBI as they had also attacked 16 hospitals in the USA. Their luck would eventually run out, he said.

Mr Smyth also said that there was already a unique patient identifier number for everyone which was being used in the tracking of vaccinations. The number had been introduced in 2014 and had evolved as a result of Covid and would “feed into” the green passport system.

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