Gerry Adams, Pierce Brosnan, Lord Birt and Roger McGough were all beneficiaries of an education system founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice, a wealthy businessman from Co Waterford who sold up and devoted the rest of his life to the poor.

He opened his first school in Waterford in 1802 and the project swiftly spread throughout Ireland and beyond its shores, to English cities such as Liverpool.

In 1820 the Christian Brothers were the first Irish order of men to be formally approved by a charter from Rome. They were uncompromising in their attachment to core values of Catholicism and patriotism, with a shamrock nestling in their emblem among more religious symbols. Gaelic sports and language played a strong role and history lessons reflected a national sense of grievance at 800 years of English colonialism. The Brothers’ stated aims included the phrase “to fit the pupils under our tuition for the battle of existence”.

Mr Adams recalled being hit on his first day but did not seem to mind as he harboured a desire for a while to become a Christian Brother. He became a spokesman for the republican movement instead and is now MP for West Belfast and Sinn Fein president.

In a recent interview Brosnan remembered his unhappy days as a pupil under the Brothers before moving with his family to London. “You’d stand there saying the ‘Our Father’ and some little boy would come in late, and just because he was late, you could see the veins pop out of [the Brother’s] skull and you’d see the kid’s head crack against the door.

“You’d see him being kicked. You’d see a little boy up at the blackboard trying to get the sums right and he couldn’t, and he would be intimidated. And he would be whacked, ‘Get the sum right!’ — Whack! ‘Get the sum right!’ Whack! Until the s**t ran down his legs.”

Frank McCourt, author of the bestselling memoir Angela’s Ashes, was rejected by the Christian Brothers when his mother tried to secure him a place. In hindsight it was doubtless a blessing for the organisation to be spared Mr McCourt’s attention.

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