After almost a fortnight of exams, the Leaving Cert ended on a relatively happy note for many students, with their economics papers containing few surprises.

Teachers said the great strength of this year's papers was their topicality, with questions on inflation, labour and public sector wages all featuring. Students with an interest in current affairs were rewarded, said teachers.

Brian McDermott, a teacher in St Mary's School, Nenagh, Co Tipperary, described the papers as fair and "very manageable".

Dermot McCarthy, a teacher at Abbey Vocational School in Donegal town, was also happy with the paper, but said marks were allocated in a slightly unbalanced way in question 2.

Question 4 (b) drew ironic laughter from some students in the light of the ASTI dispute, said McDermott. It asked about the use of marginal revenue productivity for setting wages in the public sector - a vexing subject which arose during the strike.

Question 7, on budgets and the national debt, was generally fair, said McCarthy, but the final part on "tax harmonisation" was a problem for many students.

The ordinary-level paper was fair, said McCarthy, although there were too many diagrams.