THE IRISH SECOND-LEVEL Students’ Union has called for increased security measures to be put in place to prevent further mistakes on exam day.

The ISSU said it was disappointed over the security breach which took place yesterday.  The Department of Education said last night that CDs for the higher and ordinary level Leaving Cert Irish exam were inadvertently sent to some Junior Certificate exam centres today and may have been played to students.

The ISSU said that there had been a number of similar incidents in recent years.

Dylan Grace, president of the ISSU, said that the State Examinations Commission was lucky that it had time to rectify the error without causing mass disruption, as there are a number of days between the Junior and Leaving Certificate Irish aural exams.

“However, we simply cannot keep having repeats of past mistakes which result in the significant costs of printing exam papers, producing CDs and distributing them nationwide,” said Grace.

“While this won’t create a direct disadvantage to any student, it could potentially be playing on students’ minds and cause them additional stress at an already stressful time. We need to improve security measures to prevent these mistakes being repeated yet again”.

The Department of Education has said that an investigation is underway. It is not clear how long the CDs were played for before the error was discovered.

Some Junior Cert students played CD for Irish Leaving Cert aural exam >