In a watershed, after 200 years in teaching, the brothers are handing over their schools in the Republic to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. A separate trust, also run by laypeople, will be given responsibility for the schools in Northern Ireland.

The brothers have been shapers of generations of Irish boys, with a nationwide network of primary and secondary schools, but their influence has declined hugely in the past 40 years. In the 1960s, 947 brothers were teaching in the Republic, but that number has now dropped to just 18.

Their reputation has suffered greatly in the last decade as former students revealed the extent of the physical and sexual abuse they suffered at their hands. In 1998 the brothers apologised publicly for the abuse inflicted in their institutions.

The men they shaped and moulded disagree on their legacy. Labour TD Emmet Stagg this weekend called them the "greatest shower of savages and sadistic bastards I've met". Veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne has better memories. While acknowledging that beatings were part of the routine, he said: "If it wasn't for the Christian Brothers we would never have been educated because our parents just couldn't afford it".

There is no doubt many bad brothers have ruined the good name and the good work of many others. But it is unfair to tar them all with the one brush and we should remember that, without the Christian Brothers, hundreds of thousands of boys in the poverty-stricken Ireland of the time would never have got an education at all.

Certainly they had their share of sadists, perverts and men who engaged in gratuitous cruelty. But they were also peopled with inspirational teachers who offered dreams to boys who had none. We should not forget the victims of violence and abuse, but equally we cannot blame all brothers and we should acknowledge their enormous contribution to the building of this nation.