A young Dublin law graduate who said she had set her heart on being a barrister told a High Court judge yesterday she has had to consider emigrating following her failure to gain entry to King's Inns.
Ms Justine Quinn (23), of Greendale Road, Raheny, Dublin, a Trinity College honours law graduate, who conducted her own case, said she has had to consider going to study at the New York bar.
Ms Quinn is seeking an order, by way of judicial review, quashing a decision of the Society of King's Inns refusing her permission to study to be a barrister.
She claims she graduated from Trinity College in 2003 with an average percentage score of 67 per cent.
She got 69 per cent in the university's company law examination, but when she sat the same subject for the King's Inns entrance examination she got only a 25 per cent mark.
She is challenging the 25 per cent mark.
"It's extremely disheartening that you cannot do the one thing you set your heart on doing," she told Mr Justice Smyth.
Ms Quinn claims there was no right of appeal from the society's decision, and she suggested that the decision did not appear to be subject to accountability.
The society, in reply to Ms Quinn's application, said the decision refusing her entry was not a matter which was amenable to judicial review, and she was not entitled to a High Court order against the society by reason of non-disclosure.
The society also claimed Ms Quinn got the opportunity to examine the reports from the examiner and external examiner. It claimed that when she signed an application form to sit the exam she acknowledged she had read and was bound by the rules of the society. Ms Marcella Higgins, the society's director of education, in an affidavit, said they were satisfied that the procedures in relation to the company law examination were carried out in a competent and professional manner, and that the mark awarded to Ms Quinn was reliable.
The hearing continues today.