Pointing out that the revelations left some searing questions to be answered, Fr. Michael Carney said he hadn’t listened to any of the news broadcasts in the immediate aftermath of the report’s release but maintained he had read as much of it as he could.

“If only half of it was true it was awful. But all of it is true and that is mindblowing. As a man of the collar, it has left a tremendous sense of anger and to a degree shame.

“It has left a huge sense of sadness for the victims and for what they’ve had to carry through life as a result. There’s a palpable sense of loss, of hurt, of grievance that they were hurt in this way by people who were supposedly there to look after them.”

In an interview, Fr. Carney highlighted what he called an “awful period” in the history of St. Eunan’s College itself back in the fifties and sixties. “It was run by a very austere and very authoritarian regime.”

The College had, he declared, received a “mixed press” at the time. “A lot of people were very hurt. There’s a sad history where some people are concerned in relation to this place and we’d have to be still very concerned by what went on here in the past.

“It’s very difficult to make up for it and to try and heal the hurt but we need to say what needs to be said and that is ‘sorry’,” declared Fr. Carney who is stepping down as President at the end of August.

The outgoing principal said a lot of the staff of the time, particularly priests, had been assigned to teaching posts in the college against their will. “Some of these poor fellows should never have been teaching.

“That being said we have to balance it out with all the positives that this school had achieved for countless generations.”

Fr. Carney praised the former President of St. Eunan’s, Fr. Austin Laverty who, following his appointment to the post in 1971, had instigated much needed change for the good in the school. “He helped drag it kicking and screaming into the 20th century,” he maintained.