Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The point is that teachers are saying that enough has not been done, and that the conditions are not safe enough for teachers, students and the wider community. They do not want to be saying this; everybody wants schools to remain open, but if this issue is not dealt with, it is only a matter of time before there are school outbreaks, with classes and whole schools being sent home, causing chaos. Teachers are blowing the whistle on unsafe conditions that will mean chaos if they are not addressed. When meat plant workers blew the whistle on their working conditions, they were ignored and dismissed by the Government until it was too late.

Rather than ignore them this time around, I urge the Government to listen to what they are saying and take action. In a concrete way, we can take the example of the high risk teachers. The answer the Minister gave accepts the fact that people such as that teacher with multiple conditions such as acute leukemia, type 2 diabetes, asthma, anaemia and autoimmune disorder can be ordered by a private company to go back to work even though his or her own doctor says it is not safe to do so. That should be withdrawn. The advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, in the USA is that when community transmission is high, better control measures are needed in schools than when it is low. That is the case now and we need urgent action by the Government to address these issues.

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