Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Global solidarity is really important and fair and equitable access to a vaccine is vital, regardless of income, around the world. EU engagement will accelerate global efforts to bring the pandemic under control and scale up the distribution of successful vaccines when available. We strongly believe in a co-ordinated and multilateral response to Covid-19 as an unprecedented global health crisis.

We have quadrupled funding to the WHO in 2020. We support COVAX, the Covid-19 vaccines global access programme, very strongly, and this supports 92 countries. It has shipped over 31 million vaccines to 57 countries. Irish Aid recently announced a planned contribution of €4 million to COVAX to finance procurement for developing countries. We will contribute an additional €1 million to the WHO to support oversight of the COVAX mechanism to ensure it is fair and transparent. The EU announced last month that it would double funding for COVAX from €500 million to €1 billion, and we make a pro ratacontribution to that as well. The entire EU pledge to COVAX is €2.2 billion.

Some of the benefits of COVAX can be seen in the developing world but the example of Palestine struck me most. We congratulate Israel on its vaccination programme success but it is us, along with Britain, in fairness to it, as well as other wealthy countries, that are paying for the start of the vaccination roll-out in Palestine.

Last week the EU gave authorisation for a number of vaccine factories, including Marburg for the Pfizer-BioNTech, a factory in the Netherlands for AstraZeneca and a factory in Switzerland for Moderna. The process, along with many others, is ongoing. These are designed to ensure we have the capacity to supply ourselves.

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