Leaving Cert economics: higher & ordinary:Time was an issue in yesterday's higher paper.

According to students, while the content of the questions was reasonably fair, writing the answers in the time allowed proved "tough enough" for some.

This came as no surprise to ASTI subject representative Michael Corley, who teaches at St Flannan's college in Ennis.

"Time is often a problem in this exam, and I think perhaps attention should be paid to these pressures when setting the paper."

Keith Hannigan of the Institute of Education noted that the longer questions in the second part of the paper were "different from the usual format, with a twist in most of the questions somewhere".

He said elasticity did not feature at all in the long questions this year. This would have surprised many "as students and teachers would have spent a lot of time on it throughout the year".

Ordinary level students would have been "generally happy", according to Mr Corley. The paper was quite topical, using SSIAs and the Irish demand for iPods as the basis for parts of questions.

Although the reaction to the paper at higher level was fairly positive, it threw up a couple of worries about the clarity of the questions.

Students were concerned about a number of question parts that seemed vague and left them unsure of what they were being asked.

"While the content of the questions was okay, I could see where the students were getting confused," said Mr Corley.

He pointed out that problems like this could be off-putting for students who were looking for very high marks, saying that "more care should be taken when setting the questions".