Irish Oral Examiner Readies Himself For 1,000 Stories About Families And Hobbies

WITH the 2016 Irish oral exams getting underway across the country, one Waterford examiner is steeling himself for two straight weeks of students bumbling their way through monotonous stories about how many siblings they have, and what they like to do in their spare time.

This will be Dungarvan native James McKenny’s fifth year as adjudicator of Leaving Cert oral Irish, and in that time the 58-year-old estimates that he’s heard the Irish translation of the phrase “the sun was shining high in the sky” at least 13,000 times.

McKenny swore he would never chair the oral examinations ever again after sitting through hundreds of stories about “Garth Brooks agus Phairc an Chrocaigh” during last year’s cycle, but was lured back by the lucrative pay package awarded to examiners.

Fully aware of the fact that 98% of Leaving Cert students simply regurgitate information, rather than learn it, McKenny readied himself to sit through hours of pre-planned, completely scripted and exhaustively researched phrases presented as “conversational Irish dialogue”.

“I swear if one more kid just repeats the question as part of his answer just to eat up time, I’m going to go fucking mental,” said McKenny, who’s looking forward to a stiff drink when this is all over.

McKenny stated that he might ask every 100th student what they think of Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi incident, just to see if he can make someone piss themselves.