Over 100 students who are learning dance, music and acting staged a protest in the city during the week to call on the government to allow them to reopen.
Indoor classes have been suspended since the outbreak of the pandemic, however educators say they are able to teach while keeping students safe from Covid.
Speaking to RedFM News, director of Superstars Stage School in Cork Kate Gaffney says they are being totally ignored by the government :
"Teachers have been on the PUP payment. We want to come off PUP. We were ready to go back. We have everything in place in our schools, at our own expense. We've, you know, put into social distancing, the sanitization. We're ready to reopen. We've been closed now for 17 months. A lot of businesses won't recover from this, but the ones that are here today are really just trying to survive now. They are people who have families. This is people's livelihoods."
