All children aged over 15 months in day-care centres, nurseries and schools should have certificates to show they have received the MMR vaccination, an official committee has suggested, writes Padraig O'Morain, Health and Children Correspondent.
The committee stops short of saying children should not be allowed to attend without immunisation certificates, but it refers approvingly to schools in the US which require children to have two doses of the vaccine.
The suggestion is made in a draft report by a sub-committee of the National Disease Surveillance Centre.
It also recommends that healthcare workers born after 1978 should have proof of immunity or evidence of MMR vaccination with two doses of vaccine.
For successful measles control, immunisation of at least 95 per cent of the population is required, it says, but in the Republic the uptake of MMR fell to 80 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
Fears among some parents of a link between MMR and autism are thought to have contributed to the low uptake. Health authorities say no link has been established.
There were 1,595 cases of measles last year, most of them in north Co Dublin. Two children died.
"Guidelines for the Control of Measles Outbreaks in Ireland" can be read at: http://www.ndsc.ie