Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with many who have spoken here today. We are all worried about any chance of legal action with regard to the supply of vaccines or vaccine ingredients. We all recognise that, as Dr. Ursula von der Leyen has stated, mistakes were made with regard to vaccine procurement. There is an issue. We are all aware that 41 million doses have made their way out of the European Union, including 10 million doses for Britain and 1 million for the US, while nothing has come back into the European Union. We know there is a specific difficulty in respect of AstraZeneca. It is fair to say the company has engaged in fly-boy capitalism and needs to be called out and brought to account.

I accept that everything has to be on the table when it comes to a set of tools for the European Commission to do that. However, the fact is we need a solution to this issue and we do not need a legal trade war with unintended consequences.

I welcome the fact that there will be an opportunity to engage with the European Commission and possibly with US President Biden on the wider issue of vaccine supply. A conversation is needed with the European Commission to the effect that the Government has a part to play in a wider conversation with the pharmaceutical industry to see what capacity there is on a worldwide basis to up the production of vaccines. Everything has to be on the table, including intellectual property rights.

I accept there is a cost factor to this, particularly for the so-called developed world. We are hearing figures from €25 billion to €40 billion to vaccinate the developed world and that this will be a cost that will largely need to be borne by the developed world. That is the cost of doing business. There are other figures out there for what it would cost if not everybody throughout the world was vaccinated. That would allow for strains to arise and to be imported. The difficulty is that we need to ensure we miss nothing in capacity.

I ask that the Minister of State come back to us on what conversations have happened, what information the Government has, what information the European Commission has and what engagements the European Commission has had with the entire pharma industry from the point of view of ensuring we are maximising supply. Everything has to be on the table because we are talking about a cost across the globe of anything from €1 trillion to €9 trillion. That is knockout stuff and it is unacceptable. I ask the Minister of State to give us an update now and to provide a further update following the conversations with the European Commission.

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