The Department of Education did not go through a full procurement process to pick the company that did the coding for the Leaving Certificate predictive grades.

Education Minister Norma Foley has said there was not time to go through with that process and still meet the college admission deadlines.

A mistake on one line of code has led to around 6,500 students getting a poorer grade than they should.

Minister Foley says they did not have the time to go through the usual full process of procuring a coder.

"In order for the calculated grade model to be of value to students, it was known that results had to be issued by early September to make Irish and international deadlines for entry to higher and further education.

"So there was no time to run a normal, full procurement process as I understand".

Reporting by: Sean Defoe