Prime minister Dick Schoff has given his backing to junior health minister Vicky Maeijer, who has been accused of plagiarism when writing her master’s law degree thesis in 2009.

Maeijer, a minister on behalf of the far-right PVV, is said to have lifted a large number of pages of text from other sources without crediting them in her thesis. The discovery was made by radio station BNR which ran the theses of nine ministers through software to check for plagiarism. The nine were all available online.

BNR described Maeijer’s thesis as a “copy paste” job and said more than half the 69 pages were copied virtually word for word from other sources. Although 24% of the pages were sourced and credited, 32% were not, even though most of them were listed in her literature list.

The law faculty at Erasmus University is now looking into the issue.

Schoof told reporters at Friday’s press conference that he hoped Maeijer would remain part of the cabinet for “many months, rather years” to come. He said he believed the minister had acted in “good faith”.

She said on Thursday that she had written her thesis with the “best of intentions” and had “worked hard” to complete her degree.

Maeijer’s thesis for her degree in International & European Public Law focused on a Saudi businessman whose European assets were frozen because of his possible links to al-Qaida.