Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 15 Dec 2021

Go raibh maith agat the Coherleach. Minister, thank you for coming to the House today to debate this important subject. I am very sorry to see that the Government has chosen to put forward an amendment to this great motion. This amendment sort of underpins the Government's approach to don't rock the boat when dealing with anything from a trade or a commercial point of view. I want to preface what I say by quoting the founder or the person who discovered the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk. When asked why he didn't patent it, he said it was because he wanted to be a good ancestor. And I think we should take that on board and think a little bit on it. Anyway, I'll open my contribution by acknowledging the massive effort that was put in by all in the pharmaceutical industry to find a vaccine that would at worst minimise the effects of COVID-19 on those misfortunate enough to become infected with it or at best provide total immunity to the virus. Of course, we know now that this virus is mutating and where it will ultimately end is anybody's guest. Indeed, I heard a UK minister this morning saying we're likely going to have to live with this for several years to come. In a recent article, the People's Vaccine Alliance revealed that companies behind the two most successful COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna, are making a combined profit of $65,000 every minute. $65,000 every minute. While I fully understand that in the tough world of business, how it derives or is born out of the famous quote by Maynard Smith when he spoke about the animal instincts of capitalism, such principles cannot be applied to human beings. And that's what's happening in the world today, profit over humans. The world has lived with COVID-19 now for almost two years. And recorded loss of life is 5.32 million. But that recorded loss of life does not take account of the unrecorded loss of life, which we estimate to be somewhere close to 20 million. We've seen the capacity of the virus to mutate with the onset of Omicron and the impact of which is not fully understood yet. Oxfam tell us that in recent communications, the World Health Organization has recently highlighted six times more booster shots are administered around the world than primary doses in underdeveloped world. Ireland, really, the contributions that we're making, the donations of vaccines, etc., are a drop in the ocean when you compare the numbers of people waiting for them. Those people sitting in boardrooms of the pharmaceutical companies who developed the current range of COVID-19 vaccines, congratulating themselves on the profits they're 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 that governments pumped in? We're talking here in terms of my colleague, Senator Higgins, that billions of euros, pounds and dollars were pumped into the development of the vaccine, in addition to advance orders for several tens of millions of doses more than any country needed. As I already said, there are billions of people unvaccinated in the world. And 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 now must be to agree to a waiver of copyright and intellectual property rights and share all of the design and patents that are needed to ramp up production. Minister, you might address the following questions which were put to me today for your attention by Oxfam. Given the TRIPS waiver would create a generic market for low-income countries, but maintain the existing market and intellectual property rights 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, given 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 are facilitating the inequitable and racially discriminated rollout of the vaccine and other COVID-19 healthcare technologies? As this is a test case, Ireland will be impacted by those deliberations. Given the evidence against the workability of compulsory licence, can you, Minister, 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 the flexibility of TRIPS? Whose advice has the Government sought in agreeing to approach this approach? What generic pharmaceutical companies or academic experts have the Government consulted in agreeing to this approach? And does the Minister agree to meet with the relevant generic industry and academic experts on the issue in the coming days? Minister, the bottom line on it is, I have heard my colleagues and I have heard about being part of the European Union and sticking with European rules, etc, etc. Ireland can be a leader or a follower. If we are a follower, we are a weak country. We must stand proud and we must stand by our fellow human beings in the world. I certainly am not prepared to stand by quietly and watch millions of people die. And I thank my colleagues from the Civic Engagement Group, and in particular Senator Higgins, who always speaks up on human rights issues. And this is a human rights issue. And I will finish on this. When and if we fail to ensure that everybody in this world has a fair access to a COVID-19 vaccine, we are opening the door to this virus coming back with a vociferous bite in our bum and make us wake up as thousands of our own will die. Mutations is what we need to guard against. Thank you.