A 20-year-old Irish student has launched a High Court challenge to the quota on the number of undergraduate medicine places allocated to EU students, in a move which, if successful, could have serious implications for the way the CAO system operates.
Frank Prendergast jnr, from Blackrock Co Dublin, is seeking to have the quota overturned because he claims it is unconstitutional. He is taking his action against three parties: the Higher Education Authority, the Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, and the Attorney General.
His legal team - which includes former tánaiste Michael McDowell SC - will argue the defendants acted unlawfully in directing the institutions in question to "drastically reduce and limit" the number of places for Irish citizen students "in an arbitrary and unlawful way". They will also argue that as a result of the policy, non-EU students are "permitted to obtain scarce places in institutions offering undergraduate courses in medicine denied to Irish citizens".
The documents state that Mr Prendergast obtained 550 CAO points when he repeated the Leaving Certificate this year. But this was not sufficient to gain entry as an EU student to any of the undergraduate medicine courses in the country.
He then applied for a place in medicine as a non-EU student, but was refused despite being willing to pay the significant tuition fees associated with this.
Under the current system, non-EU students do not require the same level of points as EU students to gain entry to medicine here. Such students pay tens of thousands of euro per year in fees, whereas EU students can avail of the "free fees" scheme at undergraduate level.