A school principal has said there will not be 100% compliance to public health guidelines when schools re-open.
However Patrick Martin, principal of St Mochta's National School in Co Louth, said that parent's anxieties should be left at the door.
He told Pat Kenny that a big part of the problem is actually class sizes.
"We're ready, I think we're ready."
"My biggest issue is that the class sizes have remained the same.
"Class sizes in this country have been a disaster for the last 10 or 15 years.
"The two things that affect a child's educational outcome are the quality of the teacher and the class sizes.
"So class sizes should have been dealt with a long time ago, and if they had have been dealt with a long time ago... this situation would be a lot easier to go back to school with.
"So the class sizes issue is something that needs to be looked at now, and needs to be addressed in the next budget - 100%.
"In relation to the guidelines that we're implementing currently, first of all they were based on the premise that COVID-19 wasn't a particularly child-like disease.
"It seems to be now that knowledge on that is changing, but the guidelines remain the same.
"And also it was very much a 'one size fits all' document - and the problem with schools are they don't fall into that category of 'one size fits all' at all."
"It depends on the school's structures, sizes, number of kids in the class and so on and so forth.
"Every school is busting themselves to comply with the guidelines, and every school is doing their level best, and every school wants to be compliant as much as possible.
"There is no 100% compliance, however, and because of that obviously there's going to be a little eradification [sic] of confidence with parents.
"But what I will say is the chestnuts of the hand-washing will be in place, the social distancing will be in place as much as possible.
"Teachers will be busting themselves to keep the kids safe, as we all will.
School principal Patrick Martin outside St Mochta's National School in Co Louth. Picture: Supplied"Kids do need to return to work - I understand where the anxiety is coming from with parents, of course I do, but what I will say is that anxiety will not serve the children as they come through the doors.
"We don't want to be bringing children into an atmosphere riddled with fear and riddled with intrepidation.
"We want to bring the kids back to an environment where they feel safe, we will help them to feel safe.
"We need to try to keep the outside anxieties of parents on the outside, and let the children try to get back to school life".
These comments were echoed by Education Minister Norma Foley on Friday.
She said: "For parents, I understand that you may feel anxious about your child's return to school.
"We are living in a new normal.
"However, we have put in place all the precautions necessary and along with the dedication of the principals and teachers at a local school level, you can be assured that your child will return to a safe and welcoming classroom."
Mr Martin also believes that coming into flu season may complicate things.
"I suppose the worry is, and it's a reasonable one, kids have sniffles all the time and winter is coming and things like that.
"You're going to have kids with symptoms which may not necessarily be COVID-19 symptoms, but we'll be taking a zero-tolerance approach to it.
"If we have any inkling at all that there could be a problem, we'll just have to follow the procedures.
"There'll be no flexibility on that, it'll be very cut and dry."
But he suggested this could see "a lot of false starts, and there might be things that are deemed after a while to be going over the top.
"But I don't think you can be too cautious at the moment, so we're going to be siding on the side of caution big time for the foreseeable future".
