Madam, - How sensible of the Minister for Education to put forward the view that one should not need a perfect Leaving Certificate to be a good doctor and to argue that admission to our medical schools should be based on a combination of an admissions test and Leaving Certificate results.
In fact I would go further and say that a reliance solely on high marks in the Leaving may have helped medical research but it has had a detrimental effect on those destined to be general practitioners.
When I was rector of St Nicholas, Galway, I had a parishioner who returned from the United States in his late 20s with the aim of entering medical school here. By dint of extraordinary hard work he got the points in the Leaving specified for medical entrance but was then subjected to "random selection" which must be about the worst method of selection known to man (or woman).
In another instance, I gave a lift to someone about to enter university to study pharmacology. "How interesting" I said. "What led you to choose that subject?" - "I got the points" was the hopeless reply.
- Yours, etc,
ROBERT MacCARTHY, Dean of St Patrick's, The Deanery, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8.