Minister for Education Norma Foley has said it is the Government’s “firm intention” that schools will reopen on January 11th.
There had been only 94 cases of Covid-19 out of the 1.1 million-strong school community, the Minister told RTÉ radio’s News at One.
Three quarters of schools had not had to engage with public health services, she added.
When asked if the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) had recommended that schools should close, Ms Foley said that Nphet had not.
Amid the introduction of a full Level 5 lockdown in the Republic, the Government has pushed back the reopening of schools following the Christmas break from January 6th to January 11th.
It has said a further review will take place on the “precise situation in advance of that date”.
Safety
The two to three additional days of closure of schools in the extended Christmas break meant that families would have been living with the new restrictions for over 10 days and would have had the opportunity to reduce their contacts before the children return to school, Minister Foley said.
“We looked at the seriousness of the situation that society finds itself,” she added.
Keeping schools closed for a few days longer after Christmas was not due to any safety concerns around schools themselves, but as a means to help people minimise their contacts overall, she said.
The National Immunisation Advisory Committee priority list for those to be vaccinated included the school community staff, she said, but nursing homes and healthcare workers were first on that list.
It comes as schools in Northern Ireland are set to deliver remote learning in the first week of the new term after a return to classrooms was delayed due to spiralling infection rates in the region.
In the Republic, there is a "strong likelihood" that the number of new Covid-19 infections will double over the next few days, according to the chief of the HSE.
