Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Eoghan Murphy for his questions. As he will be aware, the European Medicines Agency is looking at Sputnik V and is conducting a rolling review. What is normal practice then is that the advance purchase agreements, APAs, can be put in place. For example, we have seven APAs in place, three for authorised vaccines, one for a vaccine we hope will be authorised today and three for vaccines that have not yet been authorised. The same process can be put in place for Sputnik V. I would draw the Deputy's attention to the comment from the European correspondent of The Irish Timesyesterday, in which she noted that the Italian factory announced for the production site for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine for overseas orders is a small business that has never made vaccines and is not authorised by the Italian Medicines Agency. We need to be convinced, via the European Medicines Agency and our own regulatory authorities, that if we do enter into these APAs, all vaccines meet the same very high safety and efficacy standards.

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