Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. It is no secret the Labour Party did not support the cancellation of the exams when the announcement was made on 8 May. We felt the written exams should have gone ahead.

I will go through the timeline. On 8 May, the announcement was made and there was a school profiling element for the calculated grades. The delay to leaving certificate results was announced on 17 July and the school profiling element was dropped on 1 September. Was there not a suggestion in that process that the school profiling element should have been dropped from the entire process much earlier to allow the system to adapt?

Was it as a result of what happened in the UK that there was a feeling that the Irish system should change? We saw what happened in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. The results came out and the discrepancy seemed to see disadvantaged students being doubly disadvantaged. Was that a big influence on the decision?

I will ask all my questions at once. Today, the Welsh education minister announced there will be no exams in Wales in 2021 and I am interested to know that if this is repeated across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland whether the Department of Education will also be minded to follow suit because of that rationale.

Junior certificate results were used as part of the mechanism for determining leaving certificate results. How does it make sense to use those results if 2017 - the junior cycle cohort in question - was the first year of the new English cycle? It is also the case that 13% of students do not sit an Irish exam. These are two of the three core subjects within the mechanism as chosen by the Department and they already have question marks over them.

I have a few questions on the process for choosing Polymetrika, and the witnesses have gone through that. It was indicated that the preference of the Department and stakeholders was to hold the June examinations in 2020 for a number of reasons. There was mention of the National Public Health Emergency Team and the political element, and these contributed to the final decision. The decision on school profiling was announced on 1 September but was the decision made much earlier? Was it felt that 1 September was the first time the Department could go public on that?