LEAVING CERT IRISH:EXHAUSTION AND a complicated drama question proved the biggest challenges for Leaving Cert students sitting Irish paper 2 in Drumcondra, Dublin, yesterday morning.

Many of the students at Maryfield College did not fully understand the first question on Maireád Ní Ghráda's play An Triail.

“I was a bit unsure of all the words in the question so I just wrote what I could,” Hannah Coogan-Murphy (17) said.

However she was happy overall as the paper “wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

The first drama question was “complicated”, said Louise Clarke (18), who took comfort in the fact that “everyone seems to be saying so”.

Mary-Ellen McGrath (18) had “no choice” but to answer the second drama question because she didn’t understand the first question properly.

“The questions could be worded in a much more understandable way,” she said.

Students were tired after the three hour-20 minute honours exam almost a week into the Leaving Cert.

“It went well enough but it was quite a long exam,” Louise added. “Pretty intense” was how she described her Leaving Cert experience so far.

Lisa Hooper (18) did not get home until 6pm after her maths and Irish exams on Monday and found the long days difficult.

“You are quite tired and you don’t really have time to study,” she said.

However, she was happy with the Irish paper and the honours poetry choices. She said students basically had to study everything because it was difficult to predict which of the eight poems would appear.

Mary-Ellen had looked over all of the poems in the Irish syllabus “just in case” following the widespread shock last week when Eavan Boland’s poetry failed to come up as predicted for the English exam on Monday.

“She didn’t come up and they were crying, so I didn’t want to predict,” she said.

She felt the choice was fair in the poetry section.

Despite the length of the exam, she was “very rushed for time” at the end for the history of Irish section and described paper 2 as “literally a minute a mark”.

“I was quite pushed for time and your hand gets so sore you have to stop to bend your fingers,” she said.

One student who had plenty of time to finish was Sarah Byrne (18), who sat the ordinary level paper.

She found the exam “brilliant” and “very easy” with good choice and poems that had been predicted. She even had enough time to sit an extra question and finish early.

However, she sat honours business until 5pm yesterday and has found the drawn-out days “tough”, giving her little time to study in the evenings.

As students put away their Irish text books for the last time yesterday, most felt the 14 years of studying the language had been worthwhile.

“I think it’s important. It’s our language and we are the only country that can speak it, so why not keep it and do it,” Louise said.

“It’s great to have pride in your country and it’s a good thing to keep alive,” Lisa added.