Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending. It strikes me that the appalling mix of the animal instincts of capitalism is meeting up with competitive races. The competitive race is not just that towards vaccination as it concerns individuals themselves. As an individual sitting here, I watch every day to see how close my age group is to the next stage of vaccine roll-out in Ireland. That is human nature. All of us want to be vaccinated. We want all the vaccines to be shared equally, but not just now. It is a case of saying, "I am all for it. As soon as I have been vaccinated, let us get the rest of the world vaccinated." That is a human response. The animal instincts of capitalism are driven by the ownership of the intellectual property rights. When we talk about declaring something a global public good, we are saying to the shareholders of the drugs companies and manufacturers that we do not want them to have super-normal profits, which is what they normally earn from the development of a drug of one type or another. There are two ways of dealing with that. One is that national governments would tax the shareholders to take the super-normal profits off them in order that the drug could be redistributed globally along the global network, but that is highly unlikely to happen because we are politicians and we ultimately answer to our local constituencies. The other solution, therefore, is that we cough up and pay the super-normal profits to the manufacturers to have a free licence throughout the world to get manufacturing done. I would be interested in the panel’s view on that.

We have heard about occupied territories and war-torn areas around the world such as Syria and Yemen.

Where a totalitarian government is in place, do the witnesses believe, or is there any evidence to suggest, the denial of access to a vaccine may become another form of human rights abuse?

The other terrible term I heard this morning, which is quite frightening and I believe is happening in the United States, is "vaccine chasing". People are moving from one geographical area to another because the roll-out of the vaccine is faster in the second area. I am quite concerned about that.

I must ask this question today with respect to Covid-19. Part of the argument or solution is vaccination, the other part is in testing. There is a reluctance in Ireland to use antigen testing, which many European countries have taken up and are using to see schools and manufacturing plants open up. What is the panel's view on the antigen roll-out?

The final question goes back to the issue of interpersonal competition for vaccine. My colleague, Deputy Berry, referred to Defence Forces personnel who are going into extremely testing conditions. Under normal circumstances, they are exposed to all sorts of infections, but in this particular instance they are exposed to Covid-19 on top of everything else. I fully support what Deputy Berry is talking about. Yesterday, however, we had a debate in this Chamber on special education. The question arose as to whether those who are on the front line and will have to visit five or six houses a week now qualify as front-line workers. The quite natural instinct is to stretch out the definition in order that we can bring more groups under the term "front-line workers". I would love to hear from the panel as to how we might tie down what in fact constitutes a front-line worker and then work to that definition.