Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 6 May 2021
6. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Tánaiste and 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]
View answerThe 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.
