[jan_Inkepa]

School for me (in Ireland) was more or less a race to get out of school (+ concomitant bullying) and into university to study what I was interested in (maths - at that point I wasn't able to advance any further on my own and there was nobody who could help/guide me further where I lived) - the idea of adding a year on felt like it would be a waste. In retrospect, yeah I think I made a good call. Happy to see other people getting benefit from it though.

[kiliantics]

I think OP must have grown up in a pretty affluent neighbourhood. (How many schools have programmes with epidemiological institutes?) If I had done TY in the school I went to with the others in my cohort that did, my experience would have likely been much closer to theirs than to OP's: rarely attending school, drinking, smoking weed, and in some cases not returning back to school at all to finish the leaving cert.

I was much happier getting out of school as soon as I possibly could like yourself.

[piltdownman]

TY was historically the proviso of South Dublin schools and the more elite boarders. The majority of rural students skipped it and hit University by 17.

OP sounds like he was in a gaelscoil - an Irish language school. The 'epidemiological institute' in question was either RCSI or UCD - fairly standard for 3rd level institutions to have relationships/programmes/open days with various feeder Schools.

The big red herring was the engine module. No 'affluent' school would remotely consider offering a course in stripping an engine over a semester in 1998 - far more likely that those Students were put learning classics, latin or ancient greek.