Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The biggest international issue we are facing is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it is having across the globe. A vaccine that is safe and effective will be critical to exiting this current crisis. If the roll-out of a safe and effective vaccine is going to work, a number of key things have to happen. First, the profit motive has to be removed completely from the roll-out. This means that intellectual property and patent rights, which protect the technology for the vaccine in order that those companies can make a profit, have to be waived. I note that the Government intends to give indemnity to the pharmaceutical companies and that we are going to underwrite any problems there may be with the vaccine. What is the quid pro quohere? It should require all intellectual property rights to be waived and the raw data published, because we need honesty, humility and transparency in the roll-out of this vaccine if we are going to win people over to taking it. There should be no question of those pharmaceutical companies using patent or intellectual property rules in order to safeguard profits at the expense of the roll-out of this vaccine, not just in this country but across the world. If poor countries do not get the vaccine, its efficacy could potentially be undermined.

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