Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I lend my support to the statement by the acting leader of the Opposition, Senator O'Donovan, regarding the banking inquiry. I commend my fellow Kerryman, Senator Paul Coghlan, on his honest statement, which echoed last week's equally honest statement by the Leader.
Recently, I was in the company of a friend, a punter who had been having a bad day at the horses. He had backed four or five losers in a row. I offered him some information that might have been of assistance in balancing the books, but he told me that he would quit while he was behind. The three most senior Ministers other than the Taoiseach should take a lesson from this comment and quit while they are behind. They put their feet in it at the weekend and reopened a debate that we had robustly concluded in the Chamber last week. No more on that.
On a more positive note, I commend the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, and his Department on the comprehensive circular we recently received about the 2014 leaving certificate. It made for interesting reading and will benefit those students who sat the exam as well as their parents and teachers. It explained how the system operated, the integrity of the people who set and marked the papers and the probity of the system. For many years as a teacher, I was an examiner of higher level English papers in the leaving certificate. The first lesson one learns when attending the Department's two- or three-day marking conference in Athlone is not to open one's mouth to anyone about how the system operates, particularly the media, or bring anything back to one's school principal or students that might benefit them in any way. It was a top secret omertà.

Woe betide anyone that breaks that rule. The partition has since been broken down and students now know how the system works. The more information they can get, the better. It is a good day's work.