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

The role that the Irish Government is playing in blocking people around the world getting access to Covid vaccines is criminal, murderous and absolutely scandalous. We are one year into the global roll-out of the vaccines and just one in 12 people in poor countries have received even one dose. In Haiti only 1% of the population has been vaccinated. In many African countries vaccination rates are between 2% and 5%. Three quarters of healthcare workers across Africa are not fully vaccinated.

It is not because of a lack of demand or capacity to produce the vaccines. Manufacturing facilities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Senegal, Denmark and Canada have all said they could be producing vaccines. Why are they not? It is because they are being blocked by big pharmaceutical corporations, which are artificially restricting supply to protect their super profits. Massive amounts of public money are poured into the research but it is now benefiting the corporations in the form of private profits. One factory alone in Bangladesh estimates it could produce 1 billion vaccine doses if only the intellectual property rights could be waived. What does the Irish Government do? It says COVAX this and CTAP that, and that it is not against the proposal necessarily, but behind closed doors in the European Council it is lobbying on behalf of big pharma. It is scandalous.

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