Edward Daly: I have always appreciated the excellent academic education I received there. However, the lingering memories of my time in St Columb's are dominated by hunger and loneliness and cold freezing winters. An atmosphere of harsh discipline and painful and humiliating punishment prevailed. There was little kindness or tenderness to be found on that cold hill overlooking the Foyle . . . . My problems were exclusively related to the boarding regime . . . .

Thirty years later, in the mid-1970s, I was serving as Chair of the Board of Governors when it was decided to terminate boarding at St Columb's College.