Right, I think the jury's out on Pearse.

What seems to me to be really important is what this whole episode says about the Irish State. Which is not only what the priests did but how the whole apparatus of the state as well as the wider society allowed it to go on for as long as the did.

One of the findings of the report is that a contributory factor was the continuation of the Industrial School system in Ireland after independence - the report says the system was abolished in the UK after 1920.

The implication seems to be that at least some of these children would have been safer if the 26 counties had not seceded from the UK. Not that there was no abuse in the UK and not that the Catholic church had a monopoly on it - but the Catholic Church in the UK did not have the same power over the state that it did in Ireland.