Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that and that this year's H1 percentage comes in at around 9%. However, that does not explain that there is a very distinct group of students who are saying that they had an historical pattern of high achievement and expected that their teachers' grades were in line with what their expectations were. Within that, there is the group who are now currently sitting the leaving certificate examinations and getting a rather unsympathetic ride on that because they are not getting any accommodation with regard to the actual paper that they are sitting, they have had no support since last March, or extra tuition - they have had nothing. In fact, they are going into this alone. A disproportionately high percentage of that group are the students who believe that they were downgraded unfairly because they had a standard pattern of high achievement. How can it be attributed to overestimated grades for that particular cohort, who are a unique group within those leaving certificate students, without an actual interrogation of the over 2,000 students who claim to be in that position? Not all of them will necessarily have missed out on obtaining a place in college; some of them expected to do better but just scraped by. There is also a very significant number that did not get their places and that are being put out by a year, but one cannot say that it has been caused by an overestimation without absolutely examining that particular group or having a mechanism to do so, so it does not answer how they are being ascribed that particular group.