Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House to address this issue concerning vaccines which have not been approved by the European Medicines Agency, EMA. I acknowledge the enormous success of the vaccination programme to date. We are jabbing more arms in Ireland now for the size of our population than anywhere else in the world. Everybody involved in that operation deserves our thanks and congratulations on that achievement.

The Minister of State will be aware that the European Medicines Agency has approved four vaccines. However, I am raising the question of Irish citizens outside the European Union who may have received a non-EMA-approved vaccine. This includes people who may have received the Sinovac or Sinopharm vaccines, as well as the AstraZeneca vaccine developed in India. This is particularly a problem for Irish citizens working, generally as teachers, engineers or other professionals, in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Those people’s employers arranged for them to get these vaccines very early during the global vaccination process and this situation now represents a difficulty for those people in returning home because Ireland only recognises the EMA-approved vaccines.

This situation will also present a challenge to the roll-out of the digital Covid-19 certificates. The EU is operating on the basis that only vaccines that have been approved by the EMA can be used for certificates. It is up to each of the individual countries in the EU or the European Economic Area, EEA, however, to determine who may enter each respective state. The difficulty which arises then is a discrepancy between the criteria in different European countries. Spain, for example, will accept all EMA-approved vaccines and those approved by the World Health Organization to meet the criteria for entry, which gives a total of eight vaccines overall. Greece and Estonia, then, will accept the vaccines which are recognised in the country of departure. Therefore, if somebody is leaving Dubai to travel to Greece, for instance, and he or she has been vaccinated with a vaccine recognised in Dubai, the Greek authorities will accept that as meeting their requirements for entry. In Iceland, the authorities will allow entry to someone who has been vaccinated with AstraZeneca in South Korea, as well as with the Sinovac vaccine. A similar situation exists in Cyprus and Hungary, because those countries have also administered other vaccines. In Slovenia, meanwhile, people will be permitted to enter once 21 days have elapsed, regardless of the vaccine received.

Across Europe, then, there is a divergence in the approaches which will be taken. Our concern regarding this matter is obviously for those Irish citizens seeking to return home, especially if they have spent much of the time during the Covid-19 pandemic away from Ireland but have now received a non-EMA-approved vaccine. We need clarity regarding what is going to happen concerning this situation, depending on how long it may take for the EMA to recognise those other vaccines. I also raise this matter in the context of a concern regarding international students coming to Ireland in the autumn.It is a crucial issue for our higher education institutions and it is welcome that we will see on-campus activity resume in the autumn. It is essential that we start to see international students coming back. Obviously, many of these international students will have received vaccines. I am thinking in particular of students who may be coming here from China or other parts of Asia. They will have received other vaccines. It will be challenging if we, as an authority, do not provide clarity to them on the situation.