Two years ago the Kilkenny School Project National School proudly opened its brand-new building on the Waterford Road to cater for 250 children from different religious backgrounds.
It had been founded in 1987, after years of fund-raising and in the face of opposition from the local Catholic bishop, becoming the first multi-denominational "project" school outside the Dublin area.
It also appeared fortunate in its principal: Mr Joe McKeown was a highly-regarded local teacher, a prominent INTO activist who was seen as an inspirational, even charismatic, leader by his fellow teachers.
However, the new board of management elected at the end of 1997 contained some people with strong ideas about the key role of parents in the "child-centred" education offered by the multi-denominational sector.
By the beginning of this year the involvement - the INTO called it interference - by board members in many aspects of running the school was leading to considerable tension with teachers, and particularly with Mr McKeown.
Last March, and again in May, the board wrote to the principal listing its numerous concerns about the way he was running the school.
To some it appeared that Mr McKeown was being totally hamstrung by having to refer even the most trivial decision for board approval. In early June he resigned.
The details of the differences between him and the board have remained largely unknown since then.
Neither will they be revealed by yesterday's confidential settlement, negotiated by senior Dublin barristers, which has led to the former principal withdrawing his constructive dismissal case.
In the weeks following Mr McKeown's resignation, a small group of parents came together to demand changes in the board of management's personnel and modus operandi.
They claimed there was an "unprecedented level of mistrust" between the board and the teachers, and they were dissatisfied with board members and their partners taking up paid school posts.
They accused the board of contacting selected parents to look for complaints against Mr McKeown, and demanded the resignation of both the board and the executive committee, which fills the role of school patron and is made up of parents and other supporters.
Throughout the summer and autumn increasingly angry letters flew between the new Concerned Parents group, the board, the executive committee, and another element in the school's Byzantine legal and management structure, the supervisory council.
The council put out a report which was critical both of the board and the executive committee for their attempts to control the dissemination of information, their exclusion of genuinely concerned parents and their failure to restore poor staff morale.
In December representations from the Concerned Parents group - and particularly from one of its members, Fianna Fail county councillor Mr Jimmy Brett - to the Minister for Education, led to Dr Tom McCarthy, a highly-respected educational facilitator, offering to help rebuild bridges between the parties. More recently a group of parents has brought in another facilitator specially to help mend relations between parents and those who run the school.
Also in December, the executive committee held a chaotic annual general meeting at which its officer board was re-elected amid lengthy procedural wrangles and allegations of voting irregularities.
The last six months have been too much for four of the school's 11 teachers - including the acting principal.
They have resigned on a variety of personal, professional and health grounds. One told the December a.g.m. she had "never worked under so much strain."
Educate Together, the umbrella body for the multi-denominational sector, is understood to believe that at the Kilkenny School the vital balance between a parent-run management body and a professional teaching staff broke down.
The Kilkenny board too often tried to run everything. Such basic safeguards as a proper grievance procedure for teachers were non-existent.