Close attention to past papers would have paid dividends for yesterday's chemistry students.

Mr Gerard Nugent, a teacher in CBS Youghal, Co Cork, said the questions on the higher-level paper closely resembled previous years, with no unexpected twists or surprises. "The well prepared student who had read past papers would have been very pleased," he said.

Students could have done five questions on the paper without having to attempt any calculations. Students had to do the compulsory short-answer question and five others from the long-answer section. Only question 9 relied heavily on calculations, with half of the marks given for the calculation.

TUI subject representative Mr Ted Forde said higher-level students at Ringsend Technical Institute were happy with a long but fair paper. "The most unusual feature of the paper was the strong emphasis on water. It turned up in three of the long-answer questions," he said. "This would not have suited every student. "Question 6, the second organic chemistry question, went down well with students."

At ordinary level, Mr Nugent praised questions 8, 9 and 10, which provided students with lists of answers from which they had to choose the correct one. The other questions were more or less as expected.

The questions on the paper were divided into many short parts, which would have made them easier to tackle, he said.

Higher and ordinary-level students at CBS Youghal were delighted with the papers, he said.

There were 6,951 entries for Leaving Cert chemistry this year, a slight decline on last year's number.