Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Minister of State for staying for the entirety of the debate. I commend Deputy Ó Laoghaire on bringing the motion to the House and on being a voice for leaving certificate students in the House and beyond over the past number of weeks. One of the key qualities attributed to the leaving certificate by its advocates is the fact that it is a great leveller and there is equity at its heart. Of course, that is not entirely true.

Money plays too much of a role in determining how well some people do in the leaving certificate. Notwithstanding that, there is some merit in having everybody sit the same exam in an anonymous fashion on the same day. However, this year we cannot say with any real authority that there has been equity.

The lockdowns have affected different people differently. Different schools were under restrictions at different times. Different people had different availability to broadband and other resources. Different people had very different home lives for those periods when they could not be at school. In other words, there have been too many different lived realities for us, as a House, not to reflect those different realities in the decisions that are made. Tonight, Sinn Féin is effectively asking the Oireachtas to place the voice of students at the heart of the debate on the future of the leaving certificate this year, to secure a choice for leaving certificate students between calculated grades and written examinations, and particularly to ensure that decisive and urgent action is taken to bring clarity to these matters.

On the other hand, the Minister's amendment before us is essentially saying that this House should not have a voice or an opinion at all and we should just leave it to the Minister to make a decision at some undefined point in the future. That is not good enough. If the House were to support the Minister's amendment, we would be doing a disservice to all those students from across the country who have contacted us pleading for us to recognise that this is not a year like any other. Of course, we need to have a wider debate on the future of the leaving certificate, but right now we need the Minister to provide the certainty and clarity our students have been crying out for. I am asking her to make that call tonight.

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