[6] The €850,000 project involved representatives from the Department of Health, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), the Garda Síochána, the Irish Army and Science Foundation Ireland.

[10][13][14] Within three months of development, the team had a secure, tested and reliable contact tracing app that worked and was ready to be deployed on a national scale.

[18][19] In September 2020, NearForm deployed localised versions of the app under the "COVID Alert" brand in the U.S. states of Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

[29][30] On 18 July 2020, researchers at Trinity College, Dublin issued a report claiming user privacy is not protected adequately in the COVID Tracking app if used with Google Play Services.

[33][34] The researchers at Trinity College described the revealed data transfers as "extremely troubling from a privacy viewpoint" while the Irish Council for Civil Liberties described it as being "completely opaque to users and the HSE themselves".