Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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6. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the status of negotiations by Ireland to join the World Health Organization C-TAP initiative; the practical engagement to date by his Department in this initiative; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23598/21]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) leads on Ireland’s response to international initiatives, and I understand that it is engaging with a number of Government departments, including my own, on consideration of the WHO COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative.

C-TAP has called on researchers, developers, and manufacturers to voluntarily share knowledge, intellectual property, and data necessary for Covid-19 technologies, and to undertake a voluntary suspension of patent rights to further facilitate the development and manufacture of treatments and vaccines. The initiative relies on the participation of those researchers, developers and manufacturers who hold such intellectual property to voluntarily suspend their patent rights. I am not aware that any of the leading pharmaceutical companies have endorsed the initiative, although several have independently undertaken licensing agreements regarding vaccines outside of the initiative. I understand that there has been limited engagement by WHO Member States with the initiative to date, which as I said primarily focusses on researchers, developers and manufacturers.

Ireland has consistently championed collaborative responses to the pandemic, with a focus on ensuring that the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable are served by our collective effort. The sharing of technology on vaccines, diagnostics, and treatment, is part of a broader suite of responses by Ireland to COVID-19. Ireland has shown support for sharing COVID-19 related knowledge and research outputs through many fora including, inter alia, the National Open Research Forum, Non-exclusive Royalty Free licenses through Knowledge Transfer Ireland, and SFI’s alignment with Plan S, an initiative to ensure publicly funded research is openly available, immediately, without embargo for the betterment of societal needs.

Ireland as part of Team Europe has pointed to the COVAX facility as the mechanism that is best placed to ensure that high-income countries finance the vaccines and support the developing countries to secure their share of global supply.

As part of our response, the Government, via Irish Aid has channeled €5 million to direct supports to COVID-19 vaccination, including through the COVAX mechanism, which has to date delivered over 49 million vaccines already to 121 participant countries.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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7. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the status of negotiations by Ireland to support the World Trade Organisation TRIPS waiver; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23599/21]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I think it is clear that universal and equitable access to safe, effective and affordable diagnostics, treatments and vaccines is very important in the global fight against COVID-19.

International Trade is a competence of the EU under the Treaties. In exercising that competence at the WTO, the European Commission engages with Member States, including Ireland through a variety of Committees and Working Parties/Groups, including on intellectual property.

The EU position is that the challenges raised by the proponents of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) waiver can be addressed through the existing flexibilities within the WTO TRIPS Agreement which allows governments to grant compulsory licences without the permission of the patent holder. The EU Commission also points out that the IP system incentivises and enables the stakeholders to share their innovations, to exchange knowledge and data, and to license.

The EU position is that manufacturing capacity, access to raw materials and distribution networks are the main obstacles that need to be overcome in the supply of vaccines and that increasing manufacturing capacity may be better attained through voluntary licensing arrangements by disseminating the technology and know-how of those who developed the vaccines. The EU Commission has set up a Task Force for Industrial Scale-up of COVID-19 vaccine production which aims to support the ramp-up of production capacity and address supply chain bottlenecks.

The EU is committed and open to trying to reach agreement with all members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on how to achieve the shared goal of providing timely and secure access to safe and affordable vaccines and medicines for all through the multilateral rules-based trading system. Discussions are continuing at the WTO, including in relation to how the TRIPS Agreement can support fast and effective vaccine availability. Ireland is represented in those discussions by the EU Commission.

The EU Commission considers that the COVAX Facility, the international initiative to ensure global supply and access to COVID-19 vaccines, is the mechanism that is best placed to ensure that high-income countries finance the vaccines and support the developing countries to secure their share of global supply.