The Government will soon decide whether to accept NPHET's recommendation that primary school children from third class upwards wear masks – but one school in Co Meath has already taken matters into its own hands.
Julie Dowd, the school principal of Scoil Bhríde National School in Kilbride, told Prime Time that recommending that its pupils wear masks was a desperate measure for desperate times.
Roughly one third of the school’s 333 pupils are currently absent from school – they are either sick with Covid or isolating as a close contact.
Four staff members are also absent. The school has had 37 positive cases, affecting eight classes in the past 10 days. It's perhaps no surprise that there’s been a relatively good uptake of mask wearing