Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the unfolding circumstances at the Ukrainian border, as raised by other Deputies, including Deputy Berry, earlier today. As with other Deputies, I believe the amassing of troops at that border is deeply worrying. Ireland and the EU should be preparing and they should be hoping for a de-escalation. In that regard, we should be looking forward. We should be preparing a full suite of EU sanctions. These should be authorised and communicated in advance so that, in the event of an attack, they can be triggered immediately. We must keep an eye on our own territory. If hostilities are to break out, we should plan for an increase in incursions around Ireland and for more cyberattacks, potentially against our national grid. There have already been significant fuel price increases this winter, but we can anticipate more because the Nord Stream 2 project would likely be paused. Seeing as we have a new Irish Embassy in Kiev, we should use the facility to get a full briefing on the circumstances on the ground.

A number of Deputies have spoken about the TRIPS waiver. I first spoke on this as far back as 24 March. In that speech, I talked about Covid variants and the potential for vaccine escape. I emphasised that none of us is safe until we are all safe. I have acknowledged on numerous occasions that the TRIPS waiver is not a cure-all and does not do everything that needs to be done in the global fight against the pandemic, but nobody has convinced me yet that the other approaches are working at the speed, and with the urgency, required. As Dr. Mike Ryan has told us, when dealing with a pandemic speed trumps perfection. The COVAX mechanism is falling short. The CTAP was an approach that I believed had promise but it failed to get buy-in from the pharmaceutical companies. The very fact that compulsory licensing has not been used to produce vaccines at scale is proof enough for me that it is not a workable solution. I just cannot accept the argument that we must safeguard research and development funding streams to produce vaccines when so much of the research into the vaccines was substantially underwritten by European and American taxpayers.

For the body of my speech, I will turn to another item on the agenda of the European Council meeting, that is, the upcoming EU–African Union summit. This is overdue by some two years, for entirely understandable reasons. It is supposed to be held every three years but the last one was in 2017. That in no way diminishes the urgency. Ireland can proudly stand over both its peacekeeping record in several African countries and its approach to overseas development aid. We may not be the biggest contributor in gross terms, but it is generally acknowledged that we make our expenditure on overseas development aid travel a long way. From my short time teaching in Uganda with the Réalt programme, I know at first hand of the warm regard there is for Irish people in our partner countries on the African Continent. Great credit is due in this regard to Irish Aid and the Irish NGOs, in particular. We must look beyond traditional aid structures, however. We must not consider aid structures alone. We must begin to ready ourselves to work with the African Union as an equal partner. The IMF recently declared Africa as the world's second-largest growing region. Many are predicting it is well on its way to becoming a $5 trillion economy, because household consumption is expected to increase at around 3.8% per annum to about $2.1 trillion by 2025.

The 2021 EU–African Union summit represents a key moment at which African and European leaders will meet to determine their joint priorities for their common future. There is likely to be a focus on aspects such as conflict and fragility, and also climate change, as drivers of instability. This reflects the 2020 document of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Towards a Comprehensive Strategy with Africa. It proposes working together on five key global trends: green transition and energy access; digital transformation; sustainable growth and jobs; peace, security and governance; and migration and mobility. These are interlinked. They cannot be torn one from the other, especially considering the projection for the expansion of household consumption across the African Continent. This expansion may be from a very low base, and there is a clear global equity issue in this regard, so we cannot reasonably expect African peoples to restrict their economic growth or, in particular, their standard of living. However, we must reconcile that with the urgent need for climate action in the face of climate breakdown, which is perhaps more evident in Africa than anywhere other than the poles. The solution must be that we help not only Africa but also other developing countries to skip the fossil-fuel age altogether and decouple their economic growth from their emissions increases.

This brings us back in a circle to the issue of intellectual property and whether some of those intellectual property rights relating to sustainable and renewable energy technologies need to be suspended, for example, to allow for what the comprehensive strategy terms a low-carbon, climate-resilient and green growth trajectory that avoids inefficient technologies, employing instead new renewable energy sources and hydrogen production.

Something else Ireland can be rightly proud of is its central role in producing the UN sustainable development goals. Ireland and Kenya led on that process. That must be the template and must be put at the heart of how we interact with the African Union. Such progress can be achieved only by working together on the basis of shared global commitments such as the 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals, the Paris Agreement on climate change and Agenda 2063.

I hope the Minister will bring these concerns with him as he travels to represent us in Europe.

See this speech in context