We all saw and heard Ms Rebecca Carter this morning. She is an 18 year old student from Wexford who completed her leaving certificate examination this year hoping to get enough points to do veterinary medicine in University College Dublin, UCD. When Rebecca received her results in August, she fell just short for the first and second round offers and sought a recheck of her papers. That review revealed that the examiner had wrongly added up her marks. Had that error not occurred, Rebecca would have received a higher grade. She would have exceeded the points required and been offered a place. However, the State Examinations Commission, SEC, decided not to formally recheck her results before mid-October, thereby costing her the place in university she had earned. The commission says that any alleged error can only be corrected through the formal appeals process and that the error could not be dealt with through a rectification process. It is extraordinary that if the totting up error had appeared on the front cover of the examination script, it would have been rectified outside the normal appeals process but because it happened inside the paper, it had to be dealt with through the formal system. One could not make it up.

Rebecca decided she would not allow such absurd bureaucracy to waste her life. She took her case to the court and won it yesterday. She should be commended for shining a light on the system. However, the case has highlighted a number of serious deficiencies in our examination marking process. If the SEC cannot decide on an appeal prior to the allocation of places in the academic year for which students are sitting the leaving certificate examination, the system is clearly unfit for purpose. On RTÉ this morning, Brian Mooney, who is well respected in this area, said the examiners are totting up marks using their own pens and pencils. They do not have IT available to them to carry out that process. Deputy Thomas Byrne has pointed out for some time the inadequacies of the resources being allocated to the marking process for both the leaving certificate and junior certificate examinations. It was shown during the court hearing yesterday that 1,700 examiners marked 390,000 papers in 54 days. Mistakes will be made with that type of pressure on examiners but, as we saw in Rebecca's case, mistakes interfere with people's futures. Deputy Thomas Byrne has repeatedly pointed to a major resource issue in terms of recruiting examiners yet the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, continued to stick his head in the sand.

What plans has the Government to review the system and the outcome of the case yesterday? What does it say about our State examination marking system that a student must go to the High Court to get the place in university she has worked hard for awarded to her this year? Is the Government aware of any other such cases where errors in the process have cost people places?

I thank the Deputy for raising this case. I will respond in two ways. First, I am the mother of somebody who is the same age as Rebecca. I have children at home who have just gone through the leaving certificate examination and who are going through it. The smile on that young lady's face yesterday was worth €1 million, and the pride and happiness of her parents show the determination that young woman has to achieve and succeed in what she wishes to do. I am delighted for her and wish her every success. The Ceann Comhairle should watch this space because that young woman is going to have a bright future.

Speaking as a politician, what happened in the past number of weeks is regrettable. From the perspective of the Department of Education and Skills, we watched and noted what happened as it was played out in the High Court over the past couple of days. We will review what happened with a view to ensuring that something similar does not happen again. The specifics of the review have not yet been released because the High Court judgment was only made yesterday, but I guarantee that the terms of reference of the review will be reviewed in the next couple of days. Tens of thousands of people sit the State examinations. The mistakes that can be made are human. It is not because people are under pressure or they do not have pens, as the Deputy's colleague suggested. It is because people are human and they make mistakes. However, there is a fundamental need to ensure there is enough time after the errors have been recognised to have them corrected before somebody's place is taken from them in the given academic year. If Rebecca had not gone to the High Court, she would have had to defer her application until next year, which is not a situation anybody can countenance or stand over. I certainly cannot, and neither can the Government.

The review will take into account the number of people sitting examinations, the average number of appeals and the duration of those appeals. Perhaps, as has been suggested by some commentators this morning, we need to address the recruitment issue for that time in the appeals process when most secondary school teachers have gone back to work in their normal day job and are not available. The review must be thorough and ensure that when it is completed cases such as Rebecca's never happen again.

On the Deputy's final question, I am not aware of any other cases. That does not mean there are no others, only that I am not aware of them.

We all smiled with Rebecca, but where were we last August when Rebecca was in tears when she missed out on her place? Where were we when she was told that she should not have missed out on that place but that she would not have it until this time next year? We smiled because Rebecca had to go to the High Court to smile. She had to go that far and spend that kind of money to secure her right to something she had earned. The Minister announced a review. What is the timeline for the review? Who will conduct it? Will it be outsiders, people who will bring some type of order to the system and, most importantly, give clarity to the 60,000 students who will sit the leaving certificate examination next year in order that none of them falls into the trap that affected Rebecca? We accept that mistakes can be made and that these things happen.

We cannot allow this to happen. There needs to be additional checks when dealing with people's futures, particularly people of a young age who have worked incredibly hard to achieve an ambition but who have that ambition denied to them because of error. This cannot and should not be stood over. I am sure the Minister will want to give an assurance to the 60,000 people who will sit the leaving certificate examination next year that this will not happen again.

In fairness, nobody was smiling at the fact that she had to go to the High Court, which I acknowledge the Deputy did not infer, but we were all happy to see her determination pay dividends. I hope that she gets what she wants before noon on Friday, which is a well deserved place to study to become a veterinarian in this country. The Deputy will be aware, as I am sure everybody else will be, that the SEC is an independent public body under the aegis of the Department of Education and Skills. It is because of that independence that the public has confidence in the process that is the examination of the leaving certificate and in the outcome and the results arising therefrom. Errors are made by human beings. I cannot confirm to the Deputy that the review will be done in a week or a month, though I will come back to him on the matter, but we do need to ensure that it is robust so that when errors do occur the process facilitates people being able to access the places they apply for in a given year. Some 57,000 people sat the leaving certificate last year and more than 3,000 examiners examined approximately 380,000 papers. That is a big task. The review has to be conducted and a better process put in place in order that there will be no mistakes that cannot be rectified in a timely manner in the future.