Mr. Pat Burke:

I will answer the questions in sequence and will try to be as straightforward as possible in my answers. The first question related to using young teachers as opposed to retired teachers. That is done. Young unemployed teachers are given priority in the selection. There is a tricky area here of ageism and there are constraints on how far one can go. One cannot, for instance, rule someone out because they are over a certain age but it is permissible to give priority to unemployed young teachers or teachers with less than full hours and I am sure that is done.

I will now talk about the issue of reasonable accommodations, which was raised on a number of occasions. There is no glib answer to this. I would undertake that the new commission will look at this, get a full report from the State Examinations Commission executive, and satisfy ourselves that it is operating optimally. Part of the difficulty is because at junior certificate level, the schools have discretion on this. There is quite a loose - I am not using that word pejoratively - regime of special arrangements at junior certificate level. That is legitimate enough, because the junior certificate is not high stakes. It is not a competitive examination - an advantage to one student does not disadvantage another. In real world terms, one can probably justify that.

The difficulty is that there is a tighter regime at leaving certificate level, with much stricter criteria. I am not saying these criteria are perfect but let us take it that whatever scheme one has, one needs criteria, which must be applied objectively. The criteria at leaving certificate level are tighter than they would be at junior certificate level. There is little doubt about that. That is for the good reason that there is a significant issue of inter-candidate equity and fairness at leaving certificate level, which is not the case at junior certificate level. The one thing I am certain of is that the scheme is demand-led. In so far as one can ever be certain in life, I am certain that the one thing that is not happening here is that somebody is trying to save a few bob by denying special accommodations. I am pretty certain that is not happening. It is a demand-driven scheme. If somebody meets the criteria, they get the necessary arrangement. Does the scheme need to be looked at? A new commission should always look at everything under its remit. With an open and honest objectivity, I undertake that we will do that and we will get a report.

Some issues have been raised by the Ombudsman. There are issues of timing, there is no doubt about that. Issues like that should, of course, be dealt with but with any scheme of special arrangements not everyone will be granted them and some of the arrangements being sought would probably compromise the test instrument. We will approach this with an open mind. The objective here is to be as fair and outreaching as possible to the special needs candidate, consistent with the requirement not to compromise the integrity of the test. With that one stipulation, we will do as much as we can for the special needs candidate. Within the culture of the State Examinations Commission and the people who work in that area, there is very much a pro-candidate ethos. However, we agree that this is something we will review as a commission.

My understanding is that the online payment of examination fees is in train and should be. Believe it or not, the giro system was a big initiative in its time, but it is very dated now. There was a time when the kids were bringing either the medical card exemption or the examination payment into schools and schools were driven demented creating bank accounts for these fees, and so on, and that was changed in favour of a giro. My understanding is that the idea now is to move to online payment and I expect progress on that shortly.

Regarding the issue of the 25% extra for mathematics, I must confess that I was never sure when I was an official in the Department what the right thing to do with the bonus points was, because there is no absolute wisdom on this.