Third Level Admissions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

I am just clarifying. The Deputy's question asked about the courses in which maximum leaving certificate points did not guarantee admission due to demand and he has moved on now to high-points courses. The difference between maximum and high-points is that it is a meritocracy. Rightly or wrongly, the CAO system awards courses on the basis of points. A student had maximum points and missed out on a place, which arose in one instance this year for a course that I mentioned. The other scenario I talked about is where the students that took up the course were students who had higher points than students who missed out. There were students who had the maximum points and students who had points less than that, ultimately, over descending order, until they got to the last place on the course. There were then two students who had the same points but they were not as high as other students who got into the course. One always, of course, feels sympathy for the student in that situation, but it is not the case that students on maximum points were displaced. It is students that did not get maximum points. Put simply, the students with the highest points got the places. In the case of students on lower points, at some point there was a cut-off. Unfortunately, some students missed out, but that is the way across any course in the entire CAO.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12