Schools to re-open on phased basis from March 1

The plan, discussed by the Cabinet sub-committee on Covid-19 last night, will see schools reopen for primary school pupils in junior and senior infants, and first and second class. Leaving Certificate students will also return from March 1.

The phased re-opening of schools is on track to begin on March 1.

The plan, discussed by the Cabinet sub-committee on Covid-19 last night, will see schools re-open for primary school pupils in junior and senior infants, and first and second class. Leaving Certificate students will also return from March 1.

The re-opening will be monitored for a number of weeks before any more students can expect to return due to concern from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) about the potential effect on transmission from large-scale movements of people.

Nphet officials attended last night’s sub-committee meeting and made a presentation that said “minimal changes” could be made to current restrictions and officials would support the phased re-opening of schools over a number of weeks.

Deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said: “The key message we want to get out is not specifically in relation to schools, is to the population as a whole to please not take the return to education of some students that mobility otherwise is appropriate or acceptable.

“We remain very concerned at the high levels of transmission in the community. We don’t want more inter-household mixing outside of schools, or people returning to work.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said a full re-opening of schools is not being considered, as having a million people back at the same time is “not possible” because of new variants of the virus.

“I’ve already had soundings from public health and Nphet in relation to their sense of this,” he said. “So we are re-opening schools on a phased basis.

“The public health authorities want to do this on a gradual basis because they want to monitor the impact of increased mobilisation of people on the spread of the disease.

“Say we open schools — junior infants, senior infants, first and second class potentially — public health will want to monitor that over a two-week period to see what was the impact on the spread of the virus.”

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