Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be highly significant. It would force a change of pace. At the moment the European Commission has not approved the recovery and resilience plans for Hungary or Poland. Some other countries have not put them in, but in those cases they just have not done it yet. I am happy to let the European Commission do its job there and I support what it is doing. I do not want to make its job more difficult on that because this is very important to all of us.

On vaccines and the TRIPS waiver, this is discussed on a regular basis. What I would say is that the European Union has done more than any entity or any geopolitical actor to provide both doses abroad but also the components for doses. While there was an export mechanism, one supply of vaccines was actually refused to be exported. There has been a huge exporting of vaccines. There are COVAX, direct donations, on which the Irish Government has given a major commitment. We must also recognise that the research and development part of this is really important for the entire world, but that research and development does not come out of nothing. I pay tribute to those Irish people who have been involved in this. We have a very strong name for pharmaceuticals. We have not heard too much about the aspects of the supply chain that were in Ireland but there were some. Obviously we recently heard that Pfizer is opening a plant to supply more of that supply chain. The issue of the TRIPS waiver will continue to be discussed and there are varying views at a European level on that, to get agreement on it. What the Government will do, and it is absolutely committed to this, is make sure that as many people throughout the world get access to this vaccine as quickly as possible in whatever the most efficient method is. We have been very clear about that all along.