Ms Emily O'Reilly:

One of the access requests we received was about a team that deals with these vaccine contracts, which is made up of members of the Commission and members from seven member states, not including Ireland. That is not particularly relevant but I want to make it clear that Ireland is not involved. That is the core team but then it would go back to all the member states.

A request was received from an MEP seeking the names of the civil servants from the member states on that committee. We agreed with the EMA that there were data protection issues and there was no overriding public interest in knowing who precisely the civil servants were. The Commission refused to actually publish the names of the member states that were doing this, which to my mind was quite extraordinary. Its reasoning was that if people knew, for instance, that Italy was one of those member states then somebody would be able to join the dots and locate the civil servant, which to my mind, although I did not say this at the time, was ridiculous, really. When things like that happen, one gets a little bit frustrated; let me put it that way. Some people, although not everybody, have a tendency to think that if the Commission is hiding that, what else is it hiding? With something as simple as that, therefore, the heavens were not going to fall if people knew who the member states were. Most people know who they are anyway.

We continue to get access to documents requests regarding the EMA. We have had a very long relationship with it going back even before my time. Certainly, it is a priority of my office to keep an eye on that because so many people are keeping an eye on the EMA and must put their trust in it with regard to vaccines and their authorisation.