September 1995: More than 350 Leaving Cert art students have their results upgraded after it was discovered their higher level papers had been marked too severely. One student was marked up from a C2 to an A1 a difference of 35 CAO points.

February 1996: Craftwork from 49 students from 29 schools in the 1995 Leaving Cert art exam was lost, it is revealed. Eight students missed out on third level places as a result of the error, which was not picked up by internal checking procedures in the Department of Education. Independent consultants Price Waterhouse are appointed to investigate the mistakes.

February 1996: Niamh Bheathnach tells the Dail the Price Waterhouse report will be available "within weeks".

February 1996: The Department finds further errors in the marking of the 1995 art exam, bringing the total of students whose exam work was lost to 51. All but four pieces of craft work remain missing. Forty eight upgrades are awarded as a result of the errors.

March 1996: The Department rejects claims by a group of Dundalk parents that up to 80 students were marked too hard in last year's Leaving Cert English exam. However, it apologises for a four month delay in communicating the results of an unsuccessful appeal to the parents.

April 1996: Fianna Fail claims some of the missing craft work from last year's art exam has turned up in a Co Sligo factory. It later transpires that the package was signed for at the factory but never delivered.

May 1996: A package containing practical work for the Leaving Cert engineering exam is found by a turf cutter on a hog road in Co Roscommon. A subsequent investigation by Iarnrod Eireann and the Department discovers that the package fell off a delivery truck.