Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I agree with the Chairman on the developing world and poorer countries. However, it is not just those countries that will be left behind if they do not get their populations vaccinated. It will be all of us who will be left behind. We know enough about this clever virus now to realise that, if people are allowed to go unvaccinated, it will allow mutant variants to arise which could be far more deadly than the ones we are dealing with now. If large populations around the world are left unvaccinated, that is where those variants will thrive. Eventually and inevitably, they will come into our own countries. It is not just altruism that should encourage us all to help in the vaccination effort in poorer countries. It is actually self-interest.

At the moment, everybody is stuck in this self-interest mode, although it should be recognised that the EU is contributing a lot of vaccines and funding to enable vaccine programmes to take place in developing and poorer countries. At the moment, however, it is very mé féin. There was a story last week that the UK would give people in Ireland vaccines. I do not see that happening anytime soon. In fact, the UK has denied it as well. Equally, the US is far more protectionist than the EU.

Once that panic has abated, it would be morally irresponsible, at the very least, and stupid not to make sure as many parts of the world are vaccinated as well. If not, it will all come back to haunt us again.

On the vaccine contracts, we have looked at access to documents but we have not looked at the way these were negotiated. It is not Madame von der Leyen who signs off on these. It is the member states which all sign off on decisions made about these contracts with this special committee which comprises the Commission and seven member states at the centre. It is something obviously that we might look at. We might get complaints about it. However, our focus and my mandate concern solely the actions of the Commission and not necessarily the member states.

One of the reasons there continues to be pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to be open, as well as on the Commission to ensure transparency about these contracts, is precisely because the companies in question got a lot of European money to develop those vaccines. Accordingly, they are our vaccines and our transparency.

I have followed some of the debate on the patents and I am not sure where that is at and I cannot comment with any great insight into it. What I do know is that one of the revolutionary parts of the vaccine creation has been the open access to scientists and the incredible unprecedented collaboration that has taken place among scientists of the world. It has not happened before. Before, there were particular sectors of the population who needed the vaccine and now everybody needs it. The imperative to throw everything at it is huge. As I have said, we are far from being out of this. We are still learning. There is still this frantic pace of events. It will be a while before we have the time to examine this. At the same time, I do not think we should wait forever or wait for another few years before we start looking at this because even now we can put into play some of the lessons we can learn now from how the pandemic has been managed. Inquiry is very important, and not just, or not even, for the blame game but just so that we can learn from it. It is a matter of protecting our health that we look into the decision-making at all levels.