Third Level Admissions
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-01
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Shane Curley (FF), Cultural and Educational Panel

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as ucht teacht isteach inniu don rud thar a bheith tábhachtach seo. The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, RCSI, states that the HPAT has no validity and no predictive validity on future attainment in medical courses. The issue is the validity of the HPAT as an entrance exam to medical courses in Ireland. It is the only example we have of a State exam where young boys outperform young girls, the reason being it was a 1960s construct created by men for predominantly young private school boys who would go on to do medicine in college. It also, unfortunately, favours those who have the financial means to pay for tuition. There is a huge amount of evidence that those who get tuition before they sit their HPAT exam do significantly better when they sit it.
There are alternatives. The RCSI takes in, on average, approximately 400 students every year. Some 300 of those are international students who sit situational judgment tests and multiple mini interviews. That is already carried out in this country. The situational judgment test is a really good one. It tests interpersonal skills. In the modern day, it beggars belief that we do not have a system whereby we interview people to test their interpersonal skills before they go on to do one of the most important jobs anyone could ever do, which is to be a medical doctor or dentist, or any job where one has to communicate with patients in order to ascertain the best outcomes for them. The situational judgment test is the best predictor globally of a student's future medical performance. There is a company that provides it in Ireland. It is globally recognised as the best way of predicting future medical performance. In terms of the overall rationale for this, there are two main reasons we should do it. The first is equality of educational access and the second is that, inevitably, it would lead to a higher quality of doctors being available for us in this country, whom we would have to try to retain. I am very interested in the Minister’s views on whether or can move to a more modern way of doing the entrance exams.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-01