LAST night, Seamus Nolan was at a debs' dance at the New Park Hotel in Kilkenny.
He came to the telephone when paged though, and spoke about how he felt about the Price Waterhouse report into the Leaving Cert Art examination.
The most important thing, he said, was that what happened to him would not happen to anyone else.
A mistake in marking Seamus's art exam last year led to his being given a D1, which stopped him from going to art college. The result was later corrected to a B3.
"It was too late. I was sort of raging." Last Thursday, Seamus (18), from Coolcullen, Co Kilkenny, completed the Leaving for the second time.
The human toll of the mistakes made in marking last year's art exam was highest at the Ursuline College in Sligo, where it affected 14 students.
Of these, eight have just repeated their Leaving Cert, and several more have taken jobs when they might have gone on to third level, according to their art teacher, Ms Mary Beth Milne. Others emigrated to England.
Together with the school principal and parents' representatives, Ms Milne was briefed in a Sligo hotel last night on the contents of the report by an official of the Department of Education.
While expressing relief that the affair was drawing to a close, Ms Milne said it was "very strange" that those most affected by the errors were not being provided with a copy of the report, which was sent to TDs yesterday.
"An independent inquiry should tell everybody, but this report is being restricted to a small number of people.
"The worst thing is that the events have placed doubts in students' minds about how the system works," she said.
In all, 47 students in 29 schools received upgrades, including four from the vocational school in Navan and two each from Our Lady's in Drogheda and Gorey Community School.