Explainer: Why can’t Covid-19 vaccines be made in Ireland?

Ireland has a major drug manufacturing sector, with most of the world’s top biopharma companies operating here, but turning to Covid-19 vaccine production would not be simple, cheap or quick.

Do Covid-19 vaccine producers have operations in Ireland?

Yes. Pfizer, the US pharma multinational behind the largest number of Covid-19 vaccine doses being administered in Ireland, employs more than 4,000 people across five locations in Cork, Dublin and Kildare. MSD Ireland, known as Merck in the United States, has reached an agreement with Johnson & Johnson, known as Janssen in Europe, to produce its single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in the US but not in Europe. It operates a large vaccine and biologics facility in Carlow.

Are they making - or will they be making - Covid-19 vaccines in Ireland?

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No. Pfizer operates a large biotech facility in Grange Castle in west Dublin, a tableting plant in Newbridge, Co Kildare and a chemical manufacturing facility in Cork, but it has located its Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing in Europe in the Belgian municipality of Puurs.

Merck’s arrangement with J&J is for the US only. The company produces a highly successful cancer drug called Keytruda at the MSD Ireland’s plant in Carlow that is in high demand across the world so switching to the vaccine would mean switching off production of that critical drug.

Why can’t the vaccines be produced in Ireland?

Put simply, the manufacturing facilities across the State’s pharma sector are not equipped to make the Covid-19 vaccine and it would take years for them to be repurposed to make vaccines.

Pfizer began scaling up manufacturing for the Covid-19 vaccine last summer and decided to centralise production in four locations globally, three in the United States and one in Europe (Belgium). Some equipment required to produce the vaccine did not exist and had to be created from scratch requiring a €2 billion investment in order to start production. The investment and equipment required meant that Pfizer had to decide on the best locations to produce the vaccine.

Could vaccines be produced in the State if required?

Yes, but this would take time and money, and would not solve the immediate short-term problem of vaccine shortages and delays to the promised supply of doses into the State

"We simply do not have the technology here," said Matt Moran, director of BioPharmaChem, part of business and industry representative group, Ibec.

Mr Moran said that specialised vaccine making requires new technologies such as that around the new mRNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Investment in new facilities takes time and investment because of the regulatory and technology demands with all the necessary construction, qualification, validation and watchdog approval taking several years.

“If you decided in the morning that you wanted to set up a Covid-19 vaccine production facility, it wouldn’t become viable for two or three years down the line,” he said. “Even if we could do it here, it would be in the context of being a EU member state, so you would be simply be sourcing it out of Ireland. It wouldn’t give you preferential access to product.”

But does the Government see things differently on this?

It clearly does. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that the Government had offered State support to Pfizer to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccines here but the company has said that it is concentrating its vaccine production at the facility in Belgium. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has also dangled the carrot of State aid, saying that it was on offer to firms if they wanted to make vaccines here. The Government had been in contact with pharma companies with operations in the State. IDA Ireland, the State's inward investment agency, is in regular contact with these companies.

What does the pharmaceutical industry think?

It is more realistic, knowing that in the time it would take the industry to set up a vaccine plant here, if a company were even inclined to consider this, the short-term problem of vaccine shortages would likely be resolved later this year as more vaccines are approved and companies ramp up production to meet the worldwide demand to protect the wider population.

So what is behind this these pronouncements by senior Government figures?

One industry source suggested that this might be “kite-flying” by a Government under pressure to show that it is doing everything it can to meet the public clamour for increased vaccine supplies as anger mounts over prolonged lockdown restrictions and the slow rollout of vaccines.