Reaction to 2026 Leaving Certificate Irish Paper 2 (Higher Level) by Anna Hughes, Irish teacher at The Institute of Education.
- Students will be smiling from prose and poetry questions that reward their revision in the lead up to the exam.
- The unseen elements of the exam were more challenging than previous years and students will have been pushed with unfamiliar vocabulary.
Upon receiving their exam scripts, many students flip to the prose and poetry section to see if their predictions came true. Most will breathe a quick sigh of relief as anticipated pieces appeared. But with timing a big factor in the Paper 2 they will need to have quickly jumped into the comprehensions and got moving through the sections in order to earn the top marks.
The first léamhthuiscint text followed the SEC’s common practice of including a topical person of significance, in this case the recently deceased Sr. Stan. While many people nationally may have been aware of her work, for many teenagers some of the vocabulary might have been less familiar. A good example of this is in the title as not everyone might recognise “Siúr” meaning “Sister” in the religious context. The first five questions were the typical extraction tasks for comprehensions, which students should be able to find material for with a little careful digging. However the final questions require students to use their own vocabulary to discuss how Sr. Stan was “ag cabhrú” (helping) various groups. This will have pushed students as they needed to avoid simply reiterating details from the text. A similar pattern is found in the questions on the B text about fast fashion. Again they could be word for word in their responses to the first five, but the final question asked whether students were “dóchasach” (hopeful) for the decline of fast fashion in the future. This required another layer of understanding and a much more lateral approach to the given material. In an exam where students must race the clock to cover everything, this challenging section might have slowed some of their momentum early on and pushed them to make up time elsewhere.
Emerging into the Ceist 2: Prós, the appearance of Cáca Milis and Dís will have been a relief. These were highly anticipated and the accompanied by questions reminiscent of past papers. The question on what type of person Catherine is was very typical, but students will have needed to note that “agus” in the question to ensure that both the mother and the blind man are adequately discussed for full marks. The Dís question was very nice if the student knew that “dearcadh” meant “outlook”. Stronger students will have recognised it and used all their prepared material but some might have wavered and opted for Cáca Milis instead.
The poetry section started with “An tEarrach Thiar” which was complemented by questions that were almost word for word from previous years. Students were asked about the use of imagery and repetition to test their aesthetic understanding while the final question on the author’s life and work s will have allowed them to practically recite from memory. Alternatively students could opt for “Mo ghrá-sa”, which hasn’t appeared since 2023. Again the questions balanced the technical (nature imagery and bracket usage) with a cultural appreciation of the poet. Students will have been very happy to be on such familiar footing here as they will have been able to show off their level of preparedness fairly.
The difficulty level increases again in the final stretch, Litríocht Bhreise. Most students around the country will go for either An Triail, A Thig Ná Tit Orm or Gafa. The latter two options were very typical questions, but An Triail’s will have caused some to pause. They should all recognise “fulaingíonn” as “suffering” (a key motif of the text) but this was asked through the specific lens of the social setting’s rules. Most will have anticipated a relationships-based question and some will have been thrown. However, even if a student was unsure exactly how to approach this question, material on relationships between the male and female characters will still garner marks as such interactions reiterate the societal rules.
Overall, students will leave the exam with somewhat mixed feelings. The areas that they had the chance to directly prepare for will have been a high point, but the unseen elements of the comprehensions will have posed challenges to both their vocabulary and their timing.