Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----or every ten days or whatever it is and say this is what has happened over the last week? The Garda checkpoints are either justified or unjustified. The 5 km rule is either paying off or it is not. Vaccinations are having this effect or that effect. Schools are or are not a vector for infection. It is or is not safe to reopen this, that or the other in terms of universities or the like.

There should be a forum where the same group of Members of the Oireachtas hear the same issues dealt with week on week, and can monitor them. There is absolutely no excuse why such a forum, if we are in an emergency, was not maintained in existence and amplified, and that the permanent Government became fully available to the members of that committee to explain in detail exactly which vaccine, for instance, was more effective than the last. I am an AstraZeneca double-dose man myself but I do not know whether my dosage is right or wrong. I do not know now that I am coming up to six months since my last dosage whether I need a booster. The Minister has said that I am going to get one if I want one. That is great and I am going to take it but I believe that all of these facts should be tested. We should know whether one vaccine is more or less more effective than another. Are we continuing to buy them or are we sending them to the Third World because they are ineffective or whatever?

I do not say the following on a personal or political level. There is no excuse for the Minister coming in and saying that we may have legislation and regulations. There may be, as Senator Ward has said, a need for another Bill. That will be tightly Whipped. The one advantage of the committees is that the Whip does not work on them. One must answer the question there and then. One cannot just avoid it and say here is the regulation so vote it down if you like, if one can get five, ten or 20 Deputies or Senators to vote it down. There is no excuse whatsoever, in my view, for not having a permanent committee of the Oireachtas supervising this emergency, none whatsoever except institutional self-protection.

Lastly, I agree with Senator Gavan about intellectual property rights. All of the pharmaceutical companies were given huge sums of money by governments across the developed world to develop vaccines. For a situation to exist in which those companies, which have these intellectual property rights, now control which people in the Third World, who cannot afford any of these vaccines themselves, should or should not have vaccinations and, in effect, on a global basis, which countries should have higher rates of death than others is wholly unconscionable and I do support what Senator Gavan said about that.