CJ saw exam leaks as like IRA collusion

FORMER Taoiseach Charlie Haughey equated the threat of exam papers being leaked to international espionage and collusion with the IRA when he launched the Official Secrets Bill more than 40 years ago.

The bizarre link was made in March 1962, when the then Justice Minister gave examples including Soviet Union KGB spies, paramilitary organisations’ cross-border actions, and a leaked 1960 exam paper, as reasons why the pre-Independence secrecy act needed “modernising” and updating.

In their 1994 book Democracy Blindfolded: The Case for a Freedom of Information Act in Ireland, Patrick Smyth and Ronan Brady recalled how Mr Haughey made the unexpected connection.

According to Mr Haughey, speaking during the time of the Cuban missile crisis and growing unrest on the Irish border, the leaking of an exam paper by a printer two years earlier was technically the same breach of security as anything related to actions of the KGB or republican militants.

The claim was ridiculed by opposition TDs, with Fine Gael’s Patrick McGilligan asking jokingly: “Could school children the printer sold his information [to] be prosecuted under the bill?”

However, the future taoiseach insisted the breach of information by anyone who leaked state exam papers to students was the same criminal offence as colluding with IRA members or providing secret documents for the purposes of international spies.

In 1957, Leaving Certificate students in Dublin had to take a second set of arithmetic and geometry papers in maths 12 days after sitting the original exams, after it emerged that some boys in Dublin schools were aware of the questions beforehand.

In the same year, papers in a number of Leaving Certificate and Intermediate Certificate (the predecessor of the Junior Certificate) papers were replaced at short notice in Dublin city and county, also after it emerged that the questions had become known.

Supplementary papers in 11 subjects had to be arranged for the 1969 Leaving Certificate after papers were stolen from schools in Cork and Dublin. The exams had to be retaken by thousands of students, as the incidents only became known after early exams were finished.