A chara,- A sub-committee of the European Commission makes a rushed decision in the middle of a crisis to try and ensure that vaccines are not being exported out of the EU in breach of the pharmaceutical companies’ contractual commitments to its own vaccination programme. When the serious implications of one aspect of the proposal are pointed out to it, it admits its mistake, and changes the decision. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, takes full responsibility for the mistake and commits to ensuring it doesn’t happen again. What more can we expect of our leaders? If only it were always so.
Healthcare provision is generally a national competency within the EU, and this is the first time the commission has taken the lead role in EU-wide vaccine procurement. In doing so it has helped us to avoid the kind of toxic vaccine nationalism which has broken out between the UK and the EU also breaking out between member states of the EU.
If that had happened, you can be sure that Ireland, as a smaller member state without our own vaccine manufacturing capability, would have been paying top-dollar prices at the back of the queue.
We have all learned a lot about managing a pandemic, and still have a lot to learn. Making mistakes is part of that process. It’s how you recover from a mistake that matters. – Yours, etc,
FRANK SCHNITTGER,
Blessington,
Co Wicklow.