Not all of the one million students in the country will be back in school before St Patrick's Day, the Taoiseach has said. Primary and secondary schools have not reopened since the Christmas holidays due to the surge in Covid-19 cases.
Speaking on RTÉ's Brendan O'Connor programme, Micheál Martin said that due to the large number of students "we are going to have to look at it differently".
He said there would not be "the one big bang approach because of the transmissibility" of the virus. Mr Martin said that the number of Covid-19 cases would have to be quashed in order for students to return to in-classroom education. "They have to be somewhere similar to where they were.