Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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99. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the detail of the recent open principal officer competition in which scoring errors have been made in the critical reasoning part of the aptitude test which was outsourced to a UK provider; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40340/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Principal Officer Competition was run by the Public Appointments Service (PAS), which is an independent, statutory body which provides professional recruitment and selection services to the civil and public service.  PAS have confirmed that during the course of the quality assurance process, their test provider identified an issue with the Critical Analysis test which affected the scoring of a small number of candidates.  All of the candidates impacted were contacted on Tuesday 5 September, 2017, informed of the issue, and assured that the necessary action was taken so that no candidate was disadvantaged as a result.  

 PAS continually monitor all their processes with regard to competitions to ensure as much as is possible that issues such as this are avoided.