Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland is committed to universal and fair access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. This is essential for our health at home as well in low income countries where the impact of the pandemic is reversing hard won gains and deepening social and economic inequalities.

The WHO has set a global vaccination target of 70% by the middle of next year. Currently just over 40% of the global adult population is vaccinated, with rates as low as 1% in some of the world's poorest countries. So far, over 500 million doses have been distributed to 144 countries across the globe. Over 80% of vaccines that have been delivered to low income countries have been facilitated via COVAX.

My Department, with the Department of Health and the HSE, is working to help achieve this target. Recognizing the need for effective health systems if vaccination campaigns are to be successful, since the beginning of the pandemic at least €200 million in Irish Aid funding has been invested in improving in global health, working with bilateral partners and at the global level, with the WHO, GAVI the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund. Ireland is currently on the board of the Global Fund, using this opportunity to ensure continued and effective focus on the need to strengthen health systems.

Irish Aid work in partner countries has been complemented by HSE know-how, for example sharing lessons from our COVID-19 response with the Mozambican health service or supporting the psychological resilience of frontline health workers in Jordan and Ethiopia.

So far this year, Irish Aid has given €7 million in to the COVAX facility to enable the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines for distribution to low- and middle-income countries. In addition, the Government has donated 1.3 million vaccines to COVAX, which will shortly arrive in Nigeria, Indonesia, and Egypt, among other countries.

Last month, I visited a vaccine centre in Kampala and saw some of the 335,500 AstraZeneca doses Ireland donated directly to Uganda, and heard from the local WHO representative about the difference this donation was making.

This forms part of a very significant Team Europe contribution to the pandemic response, collectively approaching €2.5 billion in contributions to COVAX alone. The recent increase in the volume of financial and dose donations, particularly by the EU and its Member States, will enable the pace of vaccine deliveries to low income countries to accelerate in the coming months.