Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As I stand here, we have a team competing at the IGBA Handa World Blind Golf championship in Rome. I wish the team well.

I raise the matter of the the leaving certificate - words that fill most of us with fear and dread, even the teachers in this room. We have an extraordinary education system. Some of the brightest minds in the world are born, study, invent and shine here but something is very wrong in our education system when those bright minds are being dulled by an unfair system. The State Examinations Commission was defeated in court this week over its role in the incorrect totting up of leaving certificate marks for a Wexford student. That was a win for that student but at what cost? Not only did she have to fight in court, the case could be appealed if full written judgement issued next month gives the State Examinations Commission cause. Thankfully, the student took her deserved place this week and will not suffer from having to play catch up but that is just one good news story. Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys ruled that the current appeals process for leaving certificate students is not only highly unfair, it is not fit for purpose and causes untold stress to students. I was contacted at one of my clinics by students from Carlow and Kilkenny with similar issues concerning a process that causes massive stress. I welcome the fact that the Minister for Education and Skills has said that he will look at speeding up the appeals process for leaving certificate examination students to ensure they do not lose out on potential college places but we need to have a good hard look at the process and also put pressure on the State Examinations Commission to get things right in the first place. It is wrong that a student must go to court to get a college place in time - a place she earned. The future of several hundred students is in the air because they know they need to ask the questions and need to know their results. They could be doing a course they thought they had to do because their points were tallied incorrectly. More students who knew their points were incorrectly tallied have been stuck waiting a year to take a college place that should have been rightfully theirs. A year is an enormous amount of time in a young adult's life and while some choose that route, others do not come back from it. There is a need for a radical overhaul of the leaving certificate because a year is too long. We also need to make sure that we are not putting students under immense pressure.