Mr. Jim Miley:

In an ideal world, interviewing all candidates would be welcomed by people, I think. It is not because the members we represent are shy of it. It is because the process to set that up would be extremely elaborate, comprehensive and costly. We have 60,000-odd students coming out of leaving certificate but we have 20,000 to 25,000 per year applying for college. We have, in total, upwards of 80,000 per year who apply. If we go back 30 or 40 years to when we had the matriculation, which probably was a precursor version of what the Senator is talking about, albeit through an exam, although there were also some interview processes back in the day, you were talking about some figure in the low thousands for entrants to third level. If you had a well-resourced third level system, that is something that could be considered, but as we have spoken about at this committee before, we have a very under-resourced third level system as it stands. Throwing something like that on top of an under-resourced system would further damage it in our view. We have considered it and we have referenced that in our submission. Our registrars have discussed this in recent weeks but on balance would say we should use a State-accredited system.

The resource issue is one aspect but the bias issue is another. We are a parochial country. Whether you are from Ahascragh or from Knockcroghery, you tend to know people in different parts of the country and everyone knows somebody. I would fear for a system that would have an over-reliance on that. Were you setting up that process, you would have to ensure you had very strong filters against bias and I am not sure how that would be constructed.