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The Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse also said that girls supervised by nuns, while subject to much less sexual abuse, suffered frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

Before the inquiry's findings were published in Dublin there were angry scenes when victims were prevented from attending the news conference.

The inquiry took nine years to complete.

It has produced a five volume report covering a 60 year period.

During that time - up to the 1980s - some 35,000 children were placed in a network of reformatories, industrial schools and workhouses.

More than 2000 told the Commission that they suffered physical or sexual abuse.

The inquiry found that government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation and the report said:

"The harshness of the regime was inculcated into the culture of the schools by successive generations of brothers, priests and nuns."

Our correspondent Shane Harrison reports.