Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Covid-19 Vaccines: Discussion

Photo of Róisín GarveyRóisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their time and work to date and the success we have had in Ireland and other countries. In some ways, I feel bad that I have had three vaccines at this stage while, during a global pandemic, many millions have had none. I feel guilty about that. As of December 2021, only 27% of healthcare workers on the African continent had been fully vaccinated. The public money invested in vaccine development is estimated at approximately €93 billion. In December 2021, the Seanad passed a motion calling on the Government to publicly support and lobby the European Commission to support a TRIPS waiver.

With regard to the innovation of vaccines, is it not the case that public and political concern and public funding was key to the innovation of Covid-19 vaccines? If that was the driving force, where is the public benefit of it globally? Legal and IP scholars have argued that the TRIPS waiver is a necessary and proportionate legal measure for clearing IP barriers to facilitate increased supply of Covid-19 vaccines and other health technologies. In these circumstances, is it not the case that high-income countries will continue to be markets for innovation regardless of the TRIPS waiver? Is it not also the case that innovation of HIV-AIDS drugs continued after generic production was allowed in low-income countries?

It is not as if we have not been very successful, thanks to big pharma, governments and public funding. We all know what happened with the HIV and AIDS epidemic. The pharmaceutical industry rolled out similar talking points to the ones the witnesses have been providing today, but allowing generic production of HIV-AIDS medicines was what it took to get increased production, lower prices and millions of lives saved. On a very simple scale, looking at what we did around AIDS in terms of what big pharma and public funding did, I do not understand why we are not doing the same here.

Vaccine manufacturing projections include vaccines that are not as effective as mRNA vaccines. Why should low-income countries accept vaccines with lower effectiveness when the people of Ireland are no longer using them? I was kind of on the fence about this a while back but I trust Trócaire, Oxfam and Amnesty Ireland. These are organisations that are work with developing countries all the time. Big pharma does not do so, and nor do I. I trust these organisations. If they are asking for this, maybe it is time we listened. Maybe we and big pharma do not know best. It is brilliant that the pharmaceutical companies came up with the vaccines, thanks to public funding, and rolled them out successfully in some countries. However, can we put our hands on our hearts and say we are doing right by everybody globally? It is very unfair. There is already such a struggle for clean water and to meet basic human rights. We know we can turn this around. We have done it with AIDS.

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