Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 354: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the reason there was no criteria as to what constituted a pass and a fail outlined in the exam taken on the 10 December by prison officers for promotion; the reason those who sat the exam in the afternoon got to re-sit the exam when those who sat the same paper in the morning did not get this opportunity; when those who sat the exam will be called for the next interview; the status on which this interview call will be made; if he will explain how the marking in the exam was adjudicated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14197/06]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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The application form for the assistant chief officer stated:

Candidates will be required to reach a minimum standard on each test in order to be considered for Stage Two of the process. Candidates will be placed in order of merit and a number will go forward to Stage Two of the process. Because of the significant number of Officers eligible to apply, prior to the commencement of Stage I of the competition, the numbers going forward to Stage II (the Interview) will be agreed following discussions with the Irish Prison Service and the Prison Officers Association. An Officer reaching the minimum standard is not automatically entitled to proceed to an interview.

There was a predetermined criteria set by the firm of occupational psychologists as to what constituted the minimum standard. An agreement was reached with the Prison Officers Association that the first 150 candidates who had reached the minimum standard would be called for interview.

On 6 December 2005, 310 prison officers were scheduled to sit a competency based exam as part 1 of the promotion process to assistant chief officer. The design and preparation of the exam was outsourced to a firm of occupational psychologists which supervised the running of the exam and marked the exam papers.

There were two sessions held in two centres, that is, Dublin City University, DCU, and the Irish Prison Service training centre at Beladd, Portlaoise. Two parallel versions of the same test were used in each location, that is, different versions of the same test. The morning session proceeded without incident. However, the afternoon session for those 143 candidates sitting the second parallel version of the papers was aborted as two typing errors were identified in paper 2. The errors did not affect the correct answer, but apparently caused some anxiety among those sitting the exam at DCU. Those officers in the Portlaoise centre completed the test without drawing the attention of the invigilators to the errors on the exam. The invigilators took a unilateral decision to abort the test in DCU and contacted their counterparts in Beladd requesting them to do the same.

In response to this development the Irish Prison Service, in consultation with the firm of occupational psychologists involved, arranged for staff who had attended the afternoon session on 6 December 2005 to re-sit the exam papers 2 and 3 on Friday, 3 February 2006. Officers in Beladd were asked to re-sit paper 2 as it was thought that although the errors were not brought to anyone's attention there they may have caused some difficulty in completing the test.

The interviews will commence on 10 April 2006. While agreement was reached that those rated in the top 150 will be called for interview, a number of candidates tied on the same mark for 150th place and as result a total of 161 candidates will therefore be called for interview.

All candidates provided their responses on computer readable sheets which were scanned and checked by a third party company. The results were sent back to the firm of occupational psychologists who compiled the final order of merit.