Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would agree with the Deputy on the objective. This has to be a global vaccination programme. The reality right now is that the developed or richer world is buying up the global stock, and there is no question about that. Even if some of the stock was available for some other parts of the world very serious supports will need to be put in place in terms of healthcare supports, logistics, supply chains and a lot of other things. Yesterday, there was a meeting of EU health ministers. On behalf of Ireland, one of the calls that I added to that was that Europe would be the leader in terms of global justice on vaccinations and that was for two reasons. The first is ethical as I think we have a moral obligation to help and, second, is enlightened self-interest. There is no point in us vaccinating ourselves or Europe or America vaccinating itself if large swathes of the world are unvaccinated. That simply does not work as a strategy. For those two reasons we probably share the same end goal.

In terms of whether suspending intellectual and patent rights is the right way to go, what would have to be borne in mind is what happens the next time. Undoubtedly, there are enough vaccines out there right now that if IP was suspended across the world generic producers all over the world could produce a huge amount of vaccine very quickly. That is my sense of what would happen but here is the other question that we would have to think through. What happens when there is a mutation that requires very serious investment in an updated vaccine or vaccines, or if an entirely new disease hits us in one year's or three years' time? We would have to be very clear that if we suspend it at this time, the very same companies that we have relied on to produce all of these vaccines would not just say the next time that they would not do because the previous time we suspended their IP. That consideration would have to be given very serious thought.