Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, the Taoiseach was quoted in The Irish Timesas stating that the leaving certificate is fair but does not measure the breadth of a person's ability. We could debate this. The Taoiseach is using a very narrow definition of what is fair and unfair. Yesterday, there was another story in The Irish Timeson something that even in this narrow definition appears to be very unfair for a select group of students. This is the fact that, according to the newspaper, significant numbers of leaving certificate students have ended up being marked down in their oral examinations this year, through no fault of their own, due to shortcomings in the way interviews were conducted, according to some examiners. The newspaper states one examiner for the German orals marked 78 candidates and estimated that a majority lost marks due to omissions on the part of the teachers who conducted the interviews. The examiner stated that to penalise students for no fault of their own is not fair nor is it candidate-centred. This is absolutely correct. The idea any student should be penalised as a result of mistakes made by the person doing the interviewing is absolutely horrendous. Will the Taoiseach tell us how many students have been affected by this? Will he confirm there will not be a cover-up of this? The newspaper story seems to suggest there was some attempt at a cover-up. Will the Taoiseach please give a commitment to those students affected that no one will lose out due to mistakes, which presumably were genuine mistakes, made by the interviewers and that the students will not pay the price for them?

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