Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to go a little off the programme with my contribution vis-à-viswhat others have said. In the last 12 months, the Irish Government and its counterparts in Europe have looked at the issue of supply chains in the context of making vaccines available to Europe and dispersing them throughout the EU. This has been very successful. Many potholes were met along the way, particularly in the early days. We saw with both Oxford and Janssen how difficult it was at times to get supplies into the country but that has all been overcome, thankfully. Around 93% of the adult population in Ireland is now fully vaccinated. Who would have believed we would get there? Bloomberg, the colossal media outlet, now recognises Ireland as a world leader in terms of tackling Covid.

I want the Government to go to our European colleagues again to try to fix another supply chain, namely the one related to construction. As we know, for the past 12 or 14 months, construction prices have spiralled, with costs now 30% higher than they were pre-Covid in 2019. Analysis of the figures show that labour costs in the period have risen by 4% but material costs, particularly steel, insulation and timber, have increased dramatically. Timber is something that we can largely supply ourselves but products like steel and insulation come from further afield. The construction materials deficit is being felt in every country west of the Ural mountains and in North America. I cannot understand why there has not been an EU-wide approach to this. If the bloc of member states was able to fix the vaccine and medicine supply chains collectively, why are we not tackling the construction materials supply chain deficiencies as a bloc too? I hope the Taoiseach and Ministers can raise this with their counterparts in Europe at the European Council meeting and external to it. It is very important that such a dialogue would happen and would deepen. I believe it can be fixed.

I will conclude by referencing Poland. I have many Polish friends and neighbours. I also did a block of Erasmus study when I was in college in a small Czech Republic town near the Polish border. It was a fabulous place. I was there in 2002, a couple of years before Poland acceded to the EU and there was huge excitement about what the EU would bring in terms of economics and also in terms of the value set that the EU has stood for over many decades. The erosion of LGBT rights that we have seen in Poland in recent months is really regrettable. Poland is now in violation of EU discrimination laws.

On a separate issue, Poland is not fully playing its part as far as Covid digital certification is concerned. One of my constituents in Clare got his first vaccine in Ireland. He asked the HSE if it would be possible to get his second jab in Poland as he was relocating there. The HSE said it would be no problem because Covid digital certification policy, which is EU-wide, allows for that. He now does not have a digital certificate because Poland has decided, despite his best efforts, that all agreements that are in place in terms of certification do not apply in Poland. Polish authorities will not certify that he is fully vaccinated so all of the privileges and freedoms available to those who are certified are being denied to him. I ask the Minister of State to engage with his Polish counterpart on this matter. Poland is either a part of the Covid digital certificate system or it is not. If it is part of the system, then it needs to sign off on people, whether they are Irish or from other EU countries, who had their first vaccine dose in their home country and their second dose in Poland. That is what Poland signed up to and it needs to start issuing these certificates.

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