Port pupils given early start

BOTH Leaving Cert and Junior Cert exams began an hour earlier than normal for students at St Joseph's CBS in Portarlington, Co Laois, yesterday.

The Department of Education gave the students special "permission to begin at 8.45 a.m. in order to give them time to form a guard of honour after the funeral Mass for six members of the Maher family, who died in a house fire on Sunday.

One of the survivors, Vincent (17) a pupil at St Joseph's had been due to sit his Leaving Cert today.

To preserve the security of the exams, the school's students were not allowed to leave the exam centre until after 10.15 a.m., by which time students in other schools would have already been in their exam centres, a spokesman for the Department said.