The Government is considering making vaccines for children mandatory.
Health Minister Simon Harris has written to the Attorney General this week seeking legal advice on the matter.
It comes after figures from UNICEF showed the number of measles cases in Ireland jumped by more than 200% in the space of a year.
The UN agency has partially blamed the rising number of measles cases worldwide on misinformation and scaremongering on social media, as well as "complacency about the likelihood of getting infected".
Minister Harris said he's looking at introducing a mandatory vaccination programme to protect children and other vulnerable people.
Speaking this morning, he said: "I feel there is something irresponsible and that is against the public good sending an unvaccinated child into a school or into a creche or into a public place where they could actually make other children sick.
"Particularly young babies, who might to too young to actually get vaccinated, could end up with a very significant disease."
He stressed that no decision has yet been made, and that the legal advice is needed to know what "we can and can't do legislatively".
'Populist nonsense'
Minister Harris has also criticised politicians who have raised concerns about vaccines.
He said he wants to know if they support the immunisation programme.
He argued: "We have seen populist nonsense from some members of the Oireachtas.
"Next week I intend to write to every member of the Oireachtas, and I intend to ask them to publicly commit to supporting childhood immunisation vaccination, and to support the HPV vaccine for girls and boys."
The Government will be looking at how other countries deal with the issue of unvaccinated children attending school.
Measles cases
Earlier this year, the UN warned that measles cases worldwide almost doubled in only a year.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), by mid-January this year they'd seen just under 230,000 reported cases of measles for 2018 around the world.
That compares to 115,000 cases from 2017 reported at the same time last year.
Severe cases of measles can lead to complications such as blindness, severe diarrhoea and infections such as pneumonia.
Receiving two doses of the measles vaccine or the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is considered the best protection against the disease.
