Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We need a global solution to this issue for all sorts of reasons. We need it for ethical and moral reasons. We also need it for reasons of self-interest. There is no point in Ireland fully vaccinating its people when we live in a globalised world. We need a global solution. Given that we need a global solution for ethical and moral reasons and for our own self-interest, is the solution the suspension of intellectual property? Maybe it is but I would be concerned about that as the solution and I will state why. These pharmaceutical companies, against which the Deputy rails, have produced, in an unprecedented short timeframe, an array of vaccines that are highly effective and we are now using. Only a few months ago, eminent experts were telling me that it could be years, if ever, before we had vaccines for Covid-19.

If this were the only virus of its type that we were ever going to see, then maybe that could be something. However, I will tell the Deputies what my concern would be. It is that if there were a move to say we are suspending intellectual property, in the case of the next virus or variant that arrives, those very same companies that we need to produce the vaccines would ask why should they.

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