On Thursday last Deputy Edward Collins asked that certain aspects of the treatment of a question tabled by him in January last should be investigated by me and a statement made to the House.
The text of the question, as printed on the Order Paper, was—
To ask the Minister for Education if he is aware of the unnecessary pressures being put on post-primary leaving certificate and matriculation examiners by the points system being used by university authorities as an entrance selection method; and if he will make a full statement on the matter.
and this question was answered by the Minister on Wednesday last, 1 March. The Deputy states that the question tabled by him had the word "examinee" in the text and not "examiner" as printed.
At the outset I should explain that the General Office are under instructions to process all questions without delay so that time is not lost in getting the questions to the Departments concerned.
Each question is read immediately by one of the staff and if it is clear to him that the question requires amendment which may affect the meaning he endeavours to contact the Member concerned to put the position to him. The General Office may also, without consultation with the Member, make grammatical and drafting changes where the meaning is not involved. The question is then typed on stencil and stencilled copies are sent by hand to the Department.
In the case of Deputy Collins's question no change other than a lowering of capital letters was necessary. The question was, however, in manuscript and I should explain here that the writing in many manuscript questions received from Members is difficult to read and in such cases the officers in the General Office clarify the outline of letters and words before passing the manuscript to the typist. The writing in this particular question of Deputy Collins as in many others by the Deputy was of this nature. In fact, 12 clarifications had to be made to it. The officer did not, as suggested, write a letter "r" over the second last letter of the word now in issue. He had to firm out the last half of the word which he clarified as "iner". The officer was sure the word was "examiner". Had there been any doubt in his mind as to the word in question the matter would have been queried with Deputy Collins. I should mention that the question was on the Order Paper from 31 January last until it was answered on 1 March.
Apart from the work done in the General Office on questions before they leave the office it will be appreciated that, as questions are dispatched very promptly to Departments, problems of order and so on may subsequently be discovered here in relation to a question and on the other hand a Department may seek clarification of something in a question. The office endeavours to settle all such problems and where any doubt arises as to the intentions of the Member he is contacted and if unavailable the question may be temporarily withheld from the Order Paper.
No queries or doubts were raised at any stage in relation to the question by Deputy Collins. The staff dealing with questions in the General Office state that they were not asked to show the original version of the question to the Minister or his staff nor did they do so; neither did the Minister or his staff seek any clarification in relation to it or raise any point whatever on it. As I have already said, the question was on the Order Paper some five weeks. In all that time the office had no intimation that there was anything amiss in relation to it.
I accept Deputy Collins's statement that he wrote the word "examinees". I am sorry that the error occurred. It is a very rare type of error. I hope that we will not have another although it is obviously impossible to guarantee against a recurrence. The best insurance against this sort of error is for Members to see to it that their questions are in typescript or where this is not feasible then in clearly legible manuscript and I would ask the co-operation of all in this.
