Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

In his discussions with President Biden, did the Taoiseach raise the issue of a TRIPS waiver to ensure that Covid vaccines can be rolled out worldwide and not just in the global north? If there is a fire in our house, we cannot just put out the fire in the bedroom and forget about all the other rooms in the house. Similarly, vaccinating everyone in the EU and the US but leaving the global south unvaccinated will inevitably lead to a higher number of additional variants and more danger of potentially dangerous variants, such as Omicron, which will then spread around the world. Even the US has now accepted the need to waive intellectual property rights on the vaccines to end the artificial scarcity of vaccines and to put vaccinating the world before the profits of big pharmaceutical companies but the European Union, backed up by Ireland, has been the major block on this measure at the WTO. In light of Omicron, will the Taoiseach now change course and join those calling for the patents on vaccines to be scrapped so that the whole world can be vaccinated as soon as possible?

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