The leaving certificate class of 2020 has endured an extremely difficult year. "Endured" is the only word for it. Three months before the examinations the schools were shut due to the public health emergency. As weeks passed, students faced the uncertainty of whether they would even sit the leaving certificate examination this year. There was postponement, cancellation and then uncertainty about what model would be used. These young people have had a horrendous year. In ainneoin sin, lean siad ag obair leo go tréan agus rinne siad gach rud a iarradh orthu, ach tá faillí déanta ar an dream sin ag an Roinn Oideachais agus Scileanna.

These students were entitled to expect standards from the Government and the Department of Education and Skills that matched theirs, but this is not what they got. Instead, they have faced an extraordinary mess and further disadvantage due to errors in the calculated grades model. In May, I made it clear to the Department that the calculated grades model was not the correct one to use, because it would be a blunt instrument that would cause students to miss out when they should not. The Minister for Education and Skills persisted with the model and there have been persistent difficulties since then. The flaws have become apparent following the issuing of the results.

The events of yesterday beg many serious questions. The Opposition and even the Cabinet were kept in the dark. Most importantly, the leaving certificate students were kept in the dark. There is a striking lack of clarity about who in the Government knew what and when. We know that this information was in the Minister's hands for seven days, and she said nothing publicly about it. Incredibly, this was while second round offers from the Central Applications Office, CAO, were being issued and accepted. This is not academic. We cannot forget that this affects the lives and futures of students. There are likely almost 1,000 students who have missed courses due to these errors. The Minister says it will be a few days before the full numbers are known. Many students will have taken up lower choice courses in cities and counties in which they had not expected to be located. They will have paid registration fees and deposits to landlords. They do not know whether they are coming or going.

It is most important that we fix this shambles. Third level places are at the heart of the solution. The Ministers, Deputies Foley and Harris, are making general commitments or statements about additional college places to be made available. However, the Minister, Deputy Foley, also concedes that some will have to defer. That does not cut it. Asking students to spend a year in limbo is not good enough. The Minister, Deputy Foley, said that no student will be disadvantaged. To achieve that, there must be a guarantee that every student who missed a college course will now be offered the place that is rightfully his or hers.

We also must ensure accountability. The Government decided on this model. It hired the company in question. How experienced was this company in doing this type of work? How were the errors not picked up before the results were issued? This smacks of serious incompetence. What is the Government going to do to ensure there is accountability? Can the Minister clarify what he was told about this and when he was told? What did he do as a result? Did he, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste decide not to tell the rest of the Cabinet at its meeting on Tuesday? Can the Minister clear this up?

First, the most important people in this are the students. The Deputy is right that the young people in this year's leaving certificate class have had a year unlike any other. They have suffered probably more than most and as much as anybody else, other than those who went through illness or lost their lives. They have suffered most in terms of the quality of their lives at this critical time. In my experience, anyone making decisions in this entire process had the interests of the students at heart, first and foremost. That will continue to be the case. Included in that, following a coding error in the system, we will ensure there is no student who is unable to avail of a course he or she should have been able to access had that small change in code and those four characters being different in a 50,000 line code. We must ensure those students do not lose out. We are committed to doing that in every way possible.

Nobody was kept in the dark on this. The error only became apparent when the person who had been involved in doing the coding saw a slight variation in running the model again when working on the applied leaving certificate results. The person decided to check, at the person's own instigation, and found out what had happened. The person is eminently qualified. The person worked previously with Statistics Canada, the Canadian statistics agency, and also had specific expertise with regard to the Irish academic system due to work the person had done here in assessing our programme for international student assessment, PISA, results and had published on the very area on which the person was working. The person was eminently qualified. At a time when every country is considering these calculated grade systems, it was difficult to find people with such international expertise and knowledge of the Irish system.

On seeing the variation that occurred when the person ran the model for the applied leaving certificate, the person contacted the Department of Education and Skills late last Tuesday week. The Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Department were only informed on Wednesday morning that there was a difficulty, but it was not clear exactly what it was. The CAO ran its second round of offers on that day because it was not clear whether it was going to have an effect on the CAO process. The Department, correctly, started to address the issue. It employed a firm of American international consultants with expertise - it is the company that runs the SAT system in the US - as an independent, outside consultancy to go through the 50,000 lines of coding to ensure there were no other errors and to check what were the consequences of that code error. That work is due to be completed in the next day or two. Once it is confirmed to the Department, the model will be run again and the CAO will be immediately informed whether there are any upgrades, so it will be able to ensure that those students are not disadvantaged and are able to get the courses they should have received.

The Department informed my party and myself of the details on Friday. At that stage, because it was a complex issue to look into, there was only still an initial sense of where the difficulty might be. I was fully briefed on Monday in advance of a leaders' meeting where we discussed it at length. It is not a matter of keeping anyone in the dark at any stage. The Deputy can imagine if, at the early stage in this process, someone had gone out without full knowledge of what the consequences would be to all the thousands of students who did the leaving certificate. That would have created real anguish and uncertainty. It was only yesterday that the scale of the issue and the numbers were clear. A press conference was planned for 4 p.m. yesterday in advance of it being raised in the Dáil. There was no intention to keep anyone in the dark. There was an intention to try to get this right so that the risk or anguish to students would be minimised. I think that was the right approach.

The Minister talks about four characters. I have heard the Ministers, Deputies Foley and Harris, talk about them. This is not abstract stuff. Four characters represent hundreds of students and the futures and dreams they have for their courses. This is not academic, it has real implications. What might seem small on a spreadsheet is very significant in terms of the error that was made. The Minister talked about having no intention of keeping people in the dark. People were kept in the dark for over a week. The Minister still has not answered. He was informed on Friday and I would be interested to see over the course of time what was known at that stage. The Minister was given more detail on Monday and there was a Cabinet meeting - a meeting of the Government - at which the matter was not discussed. The Minister was aware of that beforehand. Why did he not insist that this be discussed at Cabinet? It is one of the greatest challenges that this and the previous Government have faced over the last few months yet it was decided that it should not be discussed at Cabinet. There is no logic to that. The Minister should try and tell us why it makes sense. I cannot make head nor tail of it. Surely such a significant issue needs to be discussed at Cabinet. We need a commitment on the third level places to resolve this.

The parties had all been working collectively. The Ministers, Deputies Harris and Foley, were working on sorting out the issue and getting to the stage where we had final detail on the estimated numbers, what the solution would be and how we would manage this. We wanted to get that right and we will get it right. The real issue here is those students. The American company is reviewing and checking the code. The Deputy is right that the characters are not the important thing. The fact that it was a coding error is not the key thing. The key thing is the students. The key thing now is the estimates we have. We will have to wait until we run the full programme on the checked code; it could be something like 6,500 students. From experience, last year some 3,000 students would have been in a similar position where they were due to get an upgrade after an appeals process. No one will know the number until the final coding check is completed and all the other systems are put in place. We can expect that there will be a number of students - no one knows the exact number - but it will be equivalent to the sort of percentage one would expect that was done last year. It may actually be less because they were students who were looking to get up a grade to get to the points that they just missed. It will probably be less but we do not know that until we get the final numbers. They will then be included in the CAO system and will be able to get the course they would have got in the first place. That is guaranteed. That is what the Government is committed to and within a matter of days.