An honours law graduate of Trinity College Dublin brought a High Court challenge yesterday to a decision of the Society of King's Inns refusing her permission to study to be a barrister.
Ms Justine Quinn (23), Greendale Road, Raheny, Dublin, is conducting her own case before Mr Justice Thomas Smyth and claims it has been her ambition since she was 15 to study law and practise as a barrister.
Ms Quinn, who is seeking an order, by way of judicial review, quashing the decision refusing her entry to King's Inns, said she graduated from Trinity in 2003 with an honours degree and an average score of 67 per cent.
She got 69 per cent in the university's company law exam but when she sat the same subject for the King's Inns entrance exam she got only 25 per cent.
Ms Quinn claimed she received an average in excess of 68 per cent in four other King's Inns entrance exam subjects and that including the 25 per cent mark, the average of the five subjects would be in excess of 59 per cent. She alleged she was told there was no appeal of the decision refusing her entry.
She challenged the 25 per cent marking and claimed the result of the company law exam was "nothing short of an aberration which has no connection with my actual performance at examination". She had no confidence in the internal examiner and the external examiner. Ms Quinn claimed that like herself, other students felt the marking of company law scripts were not consistent with their performance in other subjects. She believed similar problems were encountered in 2002 and that some students who failed in the subject were subsequently admitted to King's Inns.
Ms Quinn yesterday applied to be allowed cross-examine a number of named persons who, she claimed, would have "an inside knowledge" of the decision to refuse her entry.
Mr John McMenamin SC, for the Society of King's Inns, said the decision to refuse entry to Ms Quinn was not a matter which was amenable to judicial review and Ms Quinn was not entitled to a High Court order against the society by reason of non-disclosure.
Mr Justice Smyth said he would give a decision on Ms Quinn's application later today.