Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will take it that the Minister agreed that it was warranted to look at the hybrid model. I will take that at face value given that the Minister had meetings around it and she explored it. The reasons that have been advanced against the hybrid model first assume that the leaving certificate is itself equitable in a given year, but that is not true. It is not entirely without merits but it has significant flaws. The other argument was that grade inflation would be too high. Today this has been turned on its head by the Government. Before now, the only people talking about it as a problem for this year's cohort were members of the Opposition. The other issue relates to standardisation. I do not believe that was insurmountable. I wrote to the Minister last week outlining solutions for the quarter of the students for whom we do not have a baseline - we have a baseline for three quarters of them - and how we could fill in that quarter. I do not believe that any of these obstacles was the problem. I believe there was a view within the Department that the idea that the leaving certificate could be changed was gathering too much steam and that we needed to draw a line under it and get back to the leaving certificate as usual. I think this was the wrong approach.

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