Mr. Jim Clarken:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for this opportunity to brief them on the TRIPS waiver as it relates to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am Jim Clarken, CEO of Oxfam Ireland, also representing the People's Vaccine Alliance Ireland. Oxfam is a development, humanitarian and human rights organisation working across 66 countries to end inequality and poverty. The People's Vaccine Alliance Ireland is made up of NGOs, health practitioners across the medical profession, trade unions, academics and faith groups.

We are over two years into the Covid-19 pandemic and huge levels of vaccine inequity persist. Just 13% of people in low-income countries have received two doses, compared with 75% of people in high-income countries. Less than 1% of people in low-income countries are boosted, compared with over 60% of people here in Ireland.

To address this and to prepare for future pandemics effectively, we need diversity of production and supply. Multiple producers should be able to produce vaccines in sufficient quantity and to adapt them to new variants and needs. A TRIPS waiver will help to achieve this.

An example of this potential is the WHO mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa, which has the potential to lead and to inform the development of mRNA technology in Africa. However, this may be hampered without a TRIPS waiver.

Moreover, Covid-19 therapeutics remain "out of reach of the poor" without a TRIPS waiver, according to the WHO director general, Dr. Tedros, last week. This is particularly egregious given that those who are unvaccinated are those who would benefit most from therapeutics.

Not having control over vaccine and therapeutic production means that low-income countries continue to experience the same devastation we experienced before vaccine roll-out, even though the tools to prevent this are out there. As Wilfred Gurupira, an academic in Zimbabwe recently interviewed by Oxfam, put it:

It's one thing losing those you love to a pandemic where there's nothing that can be done. But it's quite another, losing people when you know there was something that could be done to help them, but you can't access it.

The lack of access to vaccines and therapeutics is translating into huge numbers of deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, The Economistestimates that 19.5 million people have died and over 3 million Covid-19 deaths have occurred since the Omicron variant emerged. The majority of all those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries.

Arguments have been made that enough vaccines are coming online to address this issue. Experts have estimated that there will be a 15 billion dose shortfall in mRNA Covid vaccine production in 2022. mRNA vaccines have the highest reported effectiveness against Omicron. This gap is likely to increase due to the need for boosters, especially variant-specific boosters. We cannot expect developing countries to fight today's virus with yesterday's tools.

A TRIPS waiver would not just prevent large levels of mortality and morbidity in low-income countries; it could also help to prevent the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants that have the potential to drag Ireland, this part of the world and the whole world into lockdowns and restrictions again.

Allowing generic production worked before during the HIV-AIDS epidemic, although millions of lives were lost before such production was allowed. I urge the committee not to allow a similar outcome to arise by continuing to delay a TRIPS waiver, which would create a similar level of suffering and damage.

Ireland's continued opposition to the TRIPS waiver is in contravention of Ireland’s human rights obligations and is greatly damaging Ireland’s hard-earned international reputation as a champion of low-income countries and human rights. The need for Ireland’s support of the TRIPS waiver is pressing, as the WTO ministerial conference will be held in June. Low-income countries cannot wait any longer. The TRIPS waiver is supported by more than 100 countries, the WHO, the Seanad and the majority of the Irish public. It is time Ireland supported the TRIPS waiver, helped to save millions of lives and helped to put an end to this pandemic.