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

The People's Vaccine campaign, which is supported by 80 countries, many NGOs, the UN Aids programme, Oxfam and others, published a survey of epidemiologists, immunologists and infectious disease specialists in 28 different countries, 88% of whom predict that within nine to 12 months, variants of Covid-19 will have evaded the first generation of vaccines. That is a very stark warning. In roughly the same timescale it is anticipated that only 10% of the population of the some of the poorest countries in the world will be vaccinated. If those predictions are correct we are in deep trouble. The misery and the darkness of the last year of this pandemic could roll on for years to come if variants of Covid-19 evade the first generation of vaccines. The key to addressing this very frightening prospect is to ramp up the global production of vaccines to the absolute maximum level to get people all over the world, not just in wealthy countries, vaccinated as quickly as possible in order to prevent the development of new variants.

The science is absolutely clear on this but the European Union, including Ireland, failed to support the People's Vaccine campaign which calls for the waiving of patents, intellectual property rights and other protections for vaccine production technologies. The EU did so because it dances to the tune of the big pharmaceutical companies who do not want to waive those patents and intellectual property rights because they want to make cash from the pandemic. This is particularly disgusting in the context of the threat to public health, as well as the fact that it was public money that allowed those companies to develop vaccines in the first place. It was the advance orders of taxpayers and working people from all over the world that financed the development of vaccines in record time. It is absolutely shameful and unacceptable that the EU is not supporting the People's Vaccine campaign and is not insisting that technology patents and intellectual property rights are set aside in order to enable the open development of vaccines so we can ramp global supply. It is worth noting that Cuba is developing four vaccines as we speak and is willing to waive intellectual property rights. We should take our lead from the Cubans.

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