When the government first announced plans to re-open schools, there were big meetings of teachers and SNAs who were concerned for their safety.
The government brought in the union leaders and promised to speed up the vaccination of these front-line workers to get the schools open.
But having got them back to school, they have torn up their promises.
The reason is that the vaccination programme is a mess because of the incompetence of both the EU and the Irish government.
- The EU signed a secret contract with Astra Zenica where there were no penalties for delays.
- They have backed Big Pharma is keeping patents on vaccines even though we are in the middle of a health emergency.
- The EU has refused to invoke powers to force vaccine companies to co-operate and speed up the production of vaccines.
- They should have urged government to take vaccine production faculties into public ownership to make sure all capacity was used.
- The Irish government has compounded the difficulties by handing over the recruitment of vaccinators to private companies like CPL and Hibernia.
Health must come before profit. We need to take control of vaccine production away from private corporations whose main interest is profit.