The Irish Christian Brothers have described themselves as "saddened and ashamed" at the treatment of a now deceased former resident at the Letterfrack industrial school in Co Galway, and said they "apologise unreservedly to all who suffered similar hurt".
In a statement to The Irish Times they said the man concerned, Peter Tyrrell, had failed in his lifetime to receive an adequate response from any authorities to issues he raised was "a matter of deepest regret for the Christian Brothers".
They added "the hope in all of this is that all those responsible for the care and education of children today will accord all children the dignity that is their right."
The Christian Brothers' statement was issued in connection with the book Founded on Fear: Letterfrack Industrial School, War and Exile by Peter Tyrell and edited by Diarmuid Whelan of the Politics Department at UCC. It was launched in the National Library last night by journalist and broadcaster Mary Raftery.
Peter Tyrrell spent seven years in Letterfrack in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1967 he committed suicide by setting fire to himself on London's Hampstead Heath. His autobiography was discovered among the papers of the late Senator Owen Sheehy Skeffington at the National Library in 2004 by Diarmuid Whelan.
Peter Tyrrell first wrote to the senator in 1959 and was encouraged to put his experiences on paper, which he did. In 1968 Scotland Yard asked senator Skeffington to identify a card addressed to him by Peter Tyrrell.
It was found next to the charred remains of an unidentified man who had burned himself alive on Hampstead Heath the previous year and proved the only means of identifying Peter Tyrrell.