Dáil debates

Thursday, 19 May 2022

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions

Covid-19 Pandemic

9:40 am

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

The Minister of State is closing his eyes to the truth and resting in a comfortable ideology that the free market is delivering. What happened was $100 billion of public money was employed because the public said we needed to develop vaccines and therapeutics as quickly as possible. That benefit was privatised. Earlier, I said they are making $1,000 profit per minute. I meant $1,000 per second. That is Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech. These companies spend more on advertising than on research. That is true of Pfizer, for example.

It is not true that there is no problem in terms of supply. It came out clearly at the committee that, particularly with mRNA vaccines, which are the best quality, there is a huge problem with supply. That is why only one in six people in Africa is fully vaccinated. The compromise is not good enough.

It covers vaccines but not therapeutics. It covers patents but not other intellectual property barriers such as trade secrets. It does not cover every country. It requires agreement on a case-by-case basis by each country, which makes it extremely cumbersome. All of it is designed to protect the profits of the corporations and that will result in more people dying.

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