Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

They require member states to provide legal support, costs and payments of claims arising from any damages associated with administration of the vaccine. It should be remembered that we are trying to get vaccines to people.

As to what has been achieved, there are two ways of looking at this. We can always undermine and seek to pick holes in this, or we can say this is far better than anything ever attempted before in the history of states working together. Until now, the pharmaceuticals would have produced them on their own and would have charged the highest price to the highest bidder. That is what we would have had if we did not have a co-ordinated European advanced purchase agreement taken up by the Commission on behalf of the member states. Sometimes it does work, and perhaps Deputy Connolly would acknowledge that.

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