Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House to debate this important subject. I am very sorry that the Government has chosen to put forward an amendment to this great motion. That amendment underpins the Government's approach, which is not to rock the boat when it comes to dealing with anything trade-related or commercial. I preface what I say by referring to Jonas Salk, who discovered the polio vaccine. When asked why he did not patent the vaccine, he said it was because he wanted to be good ancestor. We should take that on board and reflect on it.

I open my contribution by acknowledging the massive effort by all in the pharmaceutical industry to find a vaccine which at worst minimises the effects of Covid-19 on those unfortunate enough to become infected or at best provides total immunity. Of course, we now know that this virus is mutating. Where it will ultimately end up is anybody's guess. I heard a UK Minister say this morning that we are likely to have to live with this for several years. In a recent article, the People's Vaccine Alliance revealed that companies behind the two most successful Covid vaccines - Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna - are making a combined profit of €65,000 a minute. While I fully understand about the tough world of business - John Maynard Keynes spoke about the animal instincts of capitalism - such principles cannot be applied to human beings, which is what is happening in the world today. It is a case of profit over humans.

The world has lived with Covid-19 for almost two years. Recorded loss of life stands at 5.32 million. Unrecorded loss of life is estimated to be somewhere close to 20 million. We have seen the capacity of the virus to mutate with the onset of Omicron, the impact of which is not yet fully understood. Oxfam tells us that recent communication with the WHO has highlighted that six times more booster shots are being administered around the world than are primary doses in the underdeveloped world.

The contribution Ireland is making through the donation of vaccines is a drop in the ocean when one considers the number of people waiting for them. Those people sitting in the boardrooms of the pharmaceutical companies who developed the current range of Covid-19 vaccines and congratulating themselves on the profits they are making for their shareholders from the wealthiest countries in the world should perhaps pause for thought. Can they legitimately claim ownership of the property rights given the amount of money governments have pumped in? Senator Higgins referred to billions of euro, pounds and dollars being pumped into the development of the vaccines, in addition to advance orders for several tens of millions of doses more than any country needed. There are billions of unvaccinated people throughout the world. While that remains the case, this virus will continue to mutate freely through unvaccinated regions and come back to bite those who cherish their intellectual property rights so much. The priority must be to agree to a waiver of copyright and intellectual property rights and share all of the design and patents needed to ramp up production.

The Minister of State might address the following questions Oxfam asked me to put to the Minister. Given the TRIPS waiver would create a generic market for low-income countries but maintain the existing market and intellectual property protections for rich countries, as happened during the AIDS pandemic, how will this impact companies' incentives to innovate and produce new drugs when their main market will be protected under the TRIPS waiver? How does Ireland propose to balance its human rights obligations in taking a position on the TRIPS waiver, particularly in view of the fact that a petition to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination argues that countries opposing removing intellectual property barriers on all Covid-19 medical technologies through the TRIPS waiver is facilitating the inequitable and racially discriminatory roll-out of the vaccines and other Covid-19 healthcare technologies? As this was a test case, Ireland will be impacted by those deliberations. Given the evidence against the workability of compulsory licences, can the Minister of State explain how compulsory licensing will work in practice, especially if it does not provide generic producers with the necessary trade secrets to produce vaccines? How are generic producers to access trade secrets and blueprints under any proposed compulsory licence system, other than via the flexibility of TRIPS? Whose advice has the Government sought in agreeing to this approach? What generic pharmaceutical companies or academic experts has the Government consulted in agreeing to it? Will the Minister of State agree to meet with the relevant generic industry and academic experts on the issue in the coming days?

I heard about us being part of the EU and sticking with European rules. Ireland can be a leader or a follower. If we are a follower, we are a weak country. We must stand proud and stand by our fellow human beings in the world. I am certainly not prepared to stand by quietly and watch millions of people die and I thank my colleagues from the Civil Engagement Group and Senator Higgins in particular, who always speaks up on human rights issues. This is a human rights issue. If we fail to ensure that everybody in this world has fair access to a Covid-19 vaccine, we will open the door to this virus coming back with a vociferous bite to our bum and making us wake up as thousands of our own die. Mutations are what we need to guard against.