Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's statement. Every time he makes a statement on the roll-out of the vaccine it is positive and we have this terrible pandemic on the retreat. I got my vaccine yesterday. It was a great experience in Citywest. I was a little emotional about it because the last 15 months have been extremely difficult for a lot of people in this country. There is a huge collective effort to vaccinate people and I commend everybody involved in the programme. We are all so grateful for the roll-out of the vaccine and I hope it is a great success. Hopefully, in the next few months, the vast majority of people will have taken the vaccine if they want it.

I have a number of questions about things happening outside Ireland. A study done by the People's Vaccine Alliance showed that in the last 15 months, nine individuals have become billionaires because of the roll-out of the vaccine. Oxfam, which is a very respected NGO, also commented that pharmaceutical firms are creating a monopoly with the control of vaccines during the pandemic. Five of those individuals are from a company called Moderna. The vast majority of the moneys given to Moderna were public funds. It is sickening that companies and individuals are making huge amounts of money from this vaccine.

The combined wealth of those five individuals would vaccinate 800 million people. There is a disparity and inequality between the vaccine roll-outs throughout the world.

The Government recently gave allocations of money to the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access programme, COVAX. Can that be reviewed to give substantially more money? If we have access to vaccines in future can we give them to the programme? Would the Government consider putting a special solidarity tax on the profits of some of the companies that have greatly benefited from the Covid vaccine and are based in Ireland?

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