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

It seems the European Union has performed extremely badly in securing the supplies of vaccine that we need and the contrast with Britain is stark. I wonder the extent to which this is because the European Union is deferring to the big pharmaceutical companies that are producing the vaccine because of their desire to make money and so on. I say that because, for example, the World Health Organization is calling for support for the People's Vaccine issue, which will be voted on at the World Trade Organization where Europe is holding out against the waiving of intellectual property rights, the sharing of technology and so on that would be necessary to ramp up supplies. It seems to me that this is because they are kowtowing to the companies, which are securing to maximise profit from the production of the vaccine. Even the contrast with the United States is interesting. Joe Biden has seized the means of production. He has done a socialist thing. He seized the means of production with the Defense Production Act in order to ramp up supply but we do not seem to have the same attitude.

The Taoiseach might also comment on what efforts have been made - I asked a question but I did not really understand the answer - in engagement we have had with Russia and China over their vaccines and why we are not trying to secure supplies of those vaccines. Every day we do not have vaccine rolled out is another day of hardship and sacrifice for the people of this country.

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