Classmates face trial for Leaving Cert forgery

A YALE University student and a former classmate are to face trial for allegedly sitting each other’s physics Leaving Certificate exams at a Dublin school three years ago.

Conor Dooney, aged 21, a third-year student at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, who has an address at Northumberland Avenue in Dun Laoghaire, and Stephen Boucher, also aged 21, of Old Bray Road in Foxrock, in Dublin, had been charged earlier with forgery.

It is alleged to have taken place during the Leaving Certificate physics examination at their former school, the Christian Brothers College in Monkstown, south Dublin, on June 16, 2008.

Mr Dooney and his co-accused Mr Boucher appeared at Dun Laoghaire District Court yesterday.

State solicitor Dermot O’Neill told Judge Clare Leonard that the DPP consented to the pair being returned for trial at the next term of the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Books of evidence were served on the pair by Garda Sergeant Peadar McCann, and Judge Clare Leonard then informed them that if they intended to rely on alibis as part of their defence they must notify the State within 14 days.

Both men remained silent during the brief proceedings as Judge Leonard made an order sending them forward for trial.

The pair were remanded on continuing bail.

In January, the district court had refused jurisdiction to deal with the case after hearing an outline of the prosecution’s evidence.

Gda Sgt McCann had told the court it was alleged that Mr Boucher and Mr Dooney swapped identities and sat each other’s higher level physics exams during the Leaving Certificate in June 2008.

Sgt McCann had said that Mr Dooney, a middle-distance runner, had already been accepted into Yale University, on an athletics scholarship. Sgt McCann had alleged that the exam result was not important to him but was to Mr Boucher.

The Department of Education asked gardaí to investigate the alleged incident. A file was then sent to the DPP, who directed that the pair be charged with forgery.