Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2020-10-01
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

Okay. It is a question people want answered. I will put it in another way. People find it absolutely incredible that the Cabinet sat around collectively and did not think this was serious enough to discuss.
The Minister did not even get the basic data right. We have to remember that an awful lot of pressure was put on teachers and schools to submit all of the results before the end of June. The Minister has had all of that time since. There was a further delay to get this right and rerun the model. The basic constant piece of data in the model was not right and that is what people find quite incredible.
There has been collective Cabinet responsibility for this mess and the students are the victims. The anguish and uncertainty that the Minister has consistently released on students since May is completely unacceptable in terms of delays, accommodation, costs, fees and all of that.
Is the Minister sure that additional places will be made available when it was already stated that could not be done for leaving certificate students from prior years? They have been left out of this situation. What is happening with the legal process? What if the legal process means that even more additional places have to be made available?
The Minister is admitting to two mistakes. Is it possible that there are more mistakes than that? Has the Minister looked at the North in terms of capacity in the universities and colleges there?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-10-01