Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very grateful to the Taoiseach for his opening remarks and to the Minister of State. The videoconference European Council that will take place on Thursday and Friday has a jam-packed agenda once again. It will deal with a plethora of issues but I will raise just two. First, President Joe Biden’s attendance at the Council for the first time is a wonderful opportunity for a reset of EU-US relations. The transatlantic alliance is so important as defined in the 20th and early parts of the 21st century but we cannot deny that the past few years have been extremely difficult given who was in office in the United States. I have no doubt that when the Taoiseach and other Prime Ministers sit down with the President virtually they will raise many issues, many of which will be similar. They will discuss the areas where the EU and US must work closely together in coming years, especially the next four years, including on the climate emergency. The Taoiseach has an opportunity, which should not be missed, to state clearly the continuing need for US engagement and interest in the post-Brexit fallout on this island, dealing with the Northern Ireland protocol and protecting the Good Friday Agreement. The US is the unofficial co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement. Its continuing involvement and engagement, particularly under this President and administration is extremely welcome, but there is no point in us using the opportunity to talk about more general issues; rather we must push our case front and centre at every opportunity, as this and the previous Governments have done.

The second issue, which will no doubt dominate the Council meeting and will certainly dominate the media’s reporting, is vaccines and the ongoing stand-off between the EU and certain drugs companies. This is not an EU-UK issue, despite how certain British newspapers or politicians would like to paint it. It is very much an issue about a drugs company supplying the drugs that have been paid for by the European Commission and by Irish taxpayers through a joint procurement process. I welcome the measures announced by the Commission this morning on the options that are available to it from a trading point of view. It is not an export ban and should not be interpreted as such, even though certain people will leap on the opportunity to call it that and use it as yet another stick to wrongly beat the EU with, which they left some months ago. We need the Commission to take a very stern and deliberate approach on two fronts. One is to ensure the contractual obligations of drugs companies in question are met. Only 30 million of a promised 90 million vaccines have arrived. The schedule has been blown out of the water. Two sinister causes for concern became apparent only today. In a factory in Italy, 29 million doses of the vaccine were just stumbled upon. Are they going to other EU member states, the UK, the US or elsewhere? Are they going to an international distribution centre in Liege or are they bound for the European citizens who paid for them? The second equally concerning question is whether the drug companies are selling the vaccines twice. They have taken payment twice but they have not given delivery to all. These are serious issues and we need strong action from the Commission immediately to ramp up production but also in the medium term. What is to happen to drugs companies with lucrative businesses operating throughout the EU that fail to meet their contracts with the EU? What will be the sanction? In two or three years, when everyone is happily vaccinated, will the companies that misled the Commission, broke the terms of their contract and put the lives of so many Europeans on hold be taken to task for their failures and inaction?

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