Leaving Cert student deserves to know which official tried to stamp on her dream
YOU didn’t have to be an expert in constitutional rights, due process or fair dealing to know that Wexford student Rebecca Carter had an open-and-shut case. Plain as a pikestaff, this was an instantly recognisable case of bureaucratic blackguarding, an abuse of power, a denial of legitimate expectations and a mulish refusal to behave reasonably. This was an out-and-out injustice.
Rebecca Carter is an impressive young woman. She’s clearly goal-driven and, over the winter months, hit the books in a repeat attempt at the Leaving Cert. Her target – enough points to allow her study to become a vet.
She did a cracking Leaving but somebody, somewhere, messed up. Mistakes were made when totting up her points and Rebecca’s final tally wasn’t enough to earn her a place in veterinary college.
So, she asked that a check be done. And there it was. She’d been awarded TEN points less than she’d earned – and if she got those points in the first place she’d have realised her dream college place without any fuss.
Even though the error was demonstrable and instantly correctable, the State Examinations Commission, refused to make the necessary correction until well after the date for the final call for a place in veterinary college. But worse was to come. After Rebecca Carter, backed by her parents, decided to turn it over to the lawyers, the State Examinations Commission simply dug in its heels.
They decided to put it up to Rebecca, put her on proof, let her risk everything including indeterminate costs if she lost. What a cruel decision that was.
And there are two questions that arise from that. Who exactly – I mean precisely, literally, specifically and actually – in the Examinations Commission or in the broader State bureaucracy made that decision to defend the indefensible in the High Court case that lasted four days?
Of course, whoever that was knew they had a huge advantage. That person was playing with public money and had absolutely no skin in the game themselves.
However, Rebecca and her parents were playing with THEIR money. Even if her lawyers were pro bono, they were on the hook for the Commission’s costs if they lost. As we have seen many times before, this case was characterised by a complete absence of equality of arms.
The full weight of the State was summoned up by a public servant with nothing to lose against the obvious frailty of an individual citizen with everything at risk.
The second question that arises is properly directed to Government. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and his merry band knew all about this case well in advance – because it was all over the news – and the gross irrationality and bloody-mindedness at its core. And still these self-styled pillars for a new, fairer Ireland, allowed it to continue.
Following Mr Justice Richard Humphreys’ condemnation of the system for making corrections to Leaving Cert papers as not fit for purpose, the Government now says the whole thing was wrong and they could not stand over it. Well, then why did they allow Rebecca’s case to be defended? Why did Leo not call a halt at the very beginning?
There is a cruel, anti-people, harshness and corruption at the heart of State bureaucracy – a pathology facilitated by woefully incompetent politicians.
And the most frightening thing is: if they do this in relation to an issue that, in the whole spectrum of concerns, is relatively minor, imagine the damage they have done, unseen, time and time again, to other hapless people asking only for truth and civility and who have had their pleas dismissed with casual disrespect.
And then you think of Mrs Bridget McCole and the multiple women victims of the Cervical Cancer Scandal. And all the countless others the State regards as little more than enemies.