HSE contact tracing staff to be moved to help clear passport delays

The HSE is due to move some staff to the Passport Office to help clear a major backlog, as the Covid-19 contact tracing system is cut back.

Covid testing centres around the country are expected to close soon with possibly a scaled back PCR testing system being offered in its place.

However, it is expected that Contact-tracing teams will be retained in Dublin and Cork. These teams contact people who have been identified as close contacts by a person who has tested positive for Covid-19.

It is understood that staff at the HSE's Limerick centre are being offered a move to the local Department of Foreign Affairs passport service to help with call-based work from next month.

Staff numbers working in passport call centres are set to increase dramatically over the summer. 

Siobhan Byrne, Director of Passport services in the Department of Foreign Affairs said on radio recently, that there is certainly “a sense of frustration” for people trying to get through on their phones.

"This is something that has been a challenge for us, and mostly that challenge has been around staffing. The staffing challenge is not unique to ourselves and not unique to the public service or even this country. It is an international problem at the moment," Ms Byrne told the Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk. 

“We currently have 60 people working in our customer service hub and we hope to double that figure within the next two weeks,” she confirmed. 

"It is balancing act for ourselves in that we are taking on staff all the time and we have to balance it off with how many people we have on our customer service hub answering the calls, or how many people do we have processing the passports.

"I think everyone will agree the priority has to be processing the passports and getting as many passports as we can into our customers hands to allow them to travel.

"But its also important that we communicate with our customers and we fully accept that, and that is why we are doubling the number of staff we will have in our customer service hub in the next few weeks,” Ms Byrne said.