Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The EU is the biggest exporter of vaccines. While other countries such as the United States, on some sort of national security grounds, stopped vaccines being exported to developing countries, the EU exported as many vaccine doses as we made for ourselves. I acknowledge Sinn Féin is a Euro-critical party but that is going too far. The EU has exported more vaccine doses than any other major player in the world and Ireland has been part of that. We have donated 1.7 million vaccine doses and will do more in 2022.

I did not say anything about the entrepreneurial spirit, although I did say something about incentivising innovation, which is important. It is very possible that in 2022, we will turn to companies such as BioNTech, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sanofi and others and ask them to develop a vaccine to the variants and treatments for Covid. We cannot just dismiss concerns about disincentivising innovation. It is a serious matter that needs to be considered.

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