Gardai are expected shortly to recommend that charges relating to serious sexual and physical abuse of boys in a Dublin industrial school be brought against a lay teacher and member of a religious order.
The moves in a two-year-long investigation come at least a decade after complaints were known to have been made to the Department of Education and management at the school, St Laurence's, in Finglas.
A civil servant raised the issue of the allegations of abuse with the Department of Education as long ago as February 1988. It is also understood there had been repeated complaints from a concerned staff member from the 1970s.
St Laurence's was set up by the De La Salle order in 1972 and run by the order, with State funding and under the control of the Department of Education, until 1994 when the order withdrew from the school and handed its management over to the Department.
The gardai have had a difficult task tracing ex-inmates, who were usually between the ages of 12 and 14 when they were at the school. Several are known to have drifted into lives of drug abuse and prostitution. One former pupil committed suicide in Birmingham two years ago.
The matter of the allegations of abuse at the school was drawn to the attention of the Dail Committee on Public Accounts three years ago and a Garda investigation began two years ago.
The investigation recently made a number of advances and, it is understood a file is being prepared by investigating officers and is due to be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP will decide whether or not there is the basis for criminal charges.
It is understood the gardai have taken statements from several former pupils at St Laurence's who made serious allegations about both sexual abuse and violent beatings.
The investigation is also understood to involve contact with officers in other police forces including the RUC who had carried out similar investigations. A two-year investigation was carried out by the RUC into allegations about another De La Salle boys' home, at Kircubbin, Co Down, about allegations of abuse dating from the mid-1970s.
The paedophile priest, Brendan Smyth committed abuses against boys in Kircubbin.