On 17 June last, the rich states, including the EU, killed a vaccine waiver despite the fact that President von der Leyen of the European Commission said that vaccines will be our common good. She said that two years ago. The EU Council president last year said that immunisation is a global public good. The reality is that only 18% of the poor countries have received the first vaccine compared with 80% of the affluent countries. What are we in Ireland going to do to play our part, irrespective of what the EU has done, to ensure that vaccines are available to the poorest and most deprived in our world?

I was in Geneva for the World Trade Organization talks last week. As the European Union negotiates on behalf of Ireland in these talks, decisions were made at European Commission level rather than at member state level. We did however manage to come to an agreement on a waiver in respect of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS. It may not be the agreement that many people wanted but the World Trade Organization works on the basis of unanimity and consensus. Many countries, such as the UK and Switzerland, were particularly resistant to going any further. We would have gone a bit further. That is the agreement we have and now we need to implement it. It was interesting to hear what ministers from developing countries such as India had to say. They were saying that supply is not particularly the issue any more. India has 2 billion vaccines available but the issues now are less about the supply and more about the delivery systems on the ground to give access to people. That is where we can help, through aid programmes, through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and other initiatives.