A Monaghan GP says it will not be possible for them to vaccinate 800,000 children before they return to school.
Dr Illona Duffy says GPs have been stretched due to the ongoing pandemic and are at their busiest time ever.
She told On The Record: "This year Simon Harris, before he left his role as minister for health, announced that he was going to fund the administration of flu vaccine to all our children.
"This is being done internationally, and our nearest neighbours in the UK and in Northern Ireland have been providing this in the form of a nasal vaccine to all school-going children for years.
"It's something that I'm delighted to see, and all GPs are delighted to see coming in, because flu actually affects many more of us than COVID really does, and it actually has a higher rate of admissions to hospital and probably a higher death rate overall.
"But how this is going to be administered is the question.
"We've now been told that there are 800,000 children in this age group, from the two to 18s inclusive.
"And it seems to have been decided by somebody that general practice is going to be the group who'll deliver this.
"This was normally delivered in the schools in the UK by public health colleagues.
"We are aware that they are under pressure and it may not be possible for them to go to do that.
"But I think everybody forgets: GPs are on the ground every day dealing with acute medicine, GPs are the only group who did not stop working, could not cancel clinics, could not not defer their workload 24/7.
"We've been there working every day with our staff and our practices, doing our out-of-hours, doing overnight, Saturday, Sundays, every day of the year being available.
"We can't stop doing that.
"While hospital clinics during the tough times were able to say 'We'll cancel the clinic, you'll get seen again in six months' - GPs can't do that.
"And we've never, even been busier.
"This is normally our quiet time, and we are at the busiest ever.
"People haven't been able to take holidays, they can't get locums to replace them, and now we're being expected to vaccinate 800,000 children.
"I'm not saying general practice won't do it and can't do it - but it cannot do it in the normal daytime work.
"There are lots of models: we could open up the test centres and have it done through those, we could look at the COVID hubs.
"The GPs did extra time, we're paid to go in at weekends and do that, we could look for other staff to volunteer to do it.
"So there are many ways of doing it, but the reality is it will not vaccine 800,000 children - especially when we're talking about how we're going to do it.
"It is a nasal vaccine so that part's quick, but parents have to be consented, they have to be given information, they have to be advised that their child maybe a little unwell, have temperatures over the next few days.
"And then we're being told they have to wait for 15 minutes after that vaccine".
"Again, it seems to this ongoing presumption that we'll just bring in this and hand it over to general practice.
"For me as a GP, I'm totally cheesed off, I really am".
