Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am really disappointed in the Tánaiste's response. COVAX has done so much but there has not been an assessment of whether it has met the need. Clearly, it has not because the figures speak for themselves. Just 8% of people in low-income countries will have received at least one dose by the end of 2021, compared with 76% for high-income countries. I have mentioned just some of the organisations that are crying out for a change of approach and for the TRIPS waiver to be considered as a matter of urgency. They are hardly doing that for the good of their health, which is probably a bad choice of words in the context of Covid-19. Moreover, there is no transparency regarding the deals being done bilaterally with individual pharmaceutical companies, and no acknowledgement of the vast sums of public money that have been used to incentivise, with an indemnity clause that is never ending, and none of this has ever been discussed. Will the Tánaiste address some of those issues and why we are not leading on the TRIPS waiver?

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