Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the guests for coming before the committee this morning and this afternoon.

I have one question for Mr. Tattan in respect of an issue that has been raised on numerous occasions by other witnesses who have attended before the committee. They emphasised that there would be a benefit from decoupling the leaving certificate from the admissions institutions that we have in Ireland at present. Obviously, if people described the primary purpose of the leaving certificate then, unfortunately, I think that many of them would say that it determines what a person does at third level as opposed to the culmination of all the work that he or she has done at second level. Does Mr. Tattan think there is any benefit in trying to decouple the leaving certificate from admissions to third level? Obviously, we would save the third level institutions a huge amount of trouble by deciding admissions on the basis of the leaving certificate results. Is Mr. Tattan concerned that if we decoupled it too much, we may find ourselves in an unfair situation, as can happen in other countries, whereby there would be a system of admission to third level that would be difficult to identify?