The department of Education has said it was satisfied that yesterday's Leaving Cert Irish paper could proceed as scheduled despite having been seen briefly by 16 students in Schull, Co Cork, last Friday.

The students at Schull Community College were sitting the first of two Irish papers, containing the essay and comprehension exercise, on Friday afternoon. However the exam superintendent mistakenly distributed the second paper, containing the prose and poetry questions, which were not due to be taken until yesterday. The students told a Department of Education inspector investigating the matter over the weekend that they had looked at the papers for periods of between a few seconds and less than a minute.

In a statement yesterday the Department said: "Having assessed the limited nature and duration of this exposure, and taking all of the circumstances into account, the Department was satisfied that this part of the examinations in Irish could proceed as scheduled for the 59,000 candidates concerned."

Department sources said the examiners would watch for, and take into account, any exceptionally high marks recorded in yesterday's exam by the Schull students. However they stressed they were happy that the students had seen almost nothing of the paper.

Some students had up to 45 seconds to scan the paper and note the poems, the story and the history question included on it before the supervisor was alerted to the mistake and withdrew the paper, reports Barry Roche from Cork.

However, it is now understood that the students were not cautioned against talking about paper 2 by the supervisor. It is understood some of the 16 told friends attending other schools of the contents before they were called on Sunday to meet a Department of Education inspector individually and cautioned not to tell anyone.

According to one Leaving Cert student at a Cork city school, many of his friends had heard of the Schull paper and knew what was coming up when they went in for the higher-level Irish paper 2 yesterday morning.

"Two friends of mine told me not to bother with some things because the paper had been leaked in Schull by mistake and that there would be a replacement paper. But when we got the paper, everything they said was on it - it was the same paper."

"I reckon half the people in Cork doing the paper knew about it," said the student, who declined to be named.