Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In December 2020, we had a moment of optimism when, following a massive global effort and up to €93 billion in public funding, we heard about vaccines that had been developed and were going to address and alleviate the devastating impact of Covid-19. There was also knowledge at that point about how we could work collectively to address this as a global health crisis. There was the C-TAP proposal, which was a technology pool to share not just vaccines but medicines, treatments, know-how and diagnostics in a practical way to ensure we got treatment and vaccines to everybody as quickly as possible. South Africa and India proposed that we should use the mechanisms that were there for exactly this kind of health emergency to waive the intellectual property, IP, on vaccines and their know-how and lift the TRIPS mechanisms. Despite that proposal being made, in the 18 months since then, there has been a succession of delays, disinegenuous arguments and WTO meeting after WTO meeting that have not addressed this issue. That is even though the public and parliamentarians know this is the way to go. The European Parliament, the committees and the Seanad have called for a TRIPS waiver but shamefully, our Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment went to the meeting between the African Union and the EU and said he did not want people to take advantage of this to damage innovation and intellectual property.