I was surprised to read recently about an industrial school in Ireland where some of the boys had been punished by having the soles of their feet whipped with a leather strap.

This is supposed to be extremely painful compared to being punished across the buttocks.

I was familiar that this punishment was used in parts of Greece, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East but not in Ireland. I am unsure as to how widespread it existed for punishing schoolboys.

Whipping the soles of the feet is still used by security forces in some countries as a form of extra judicial punishment for men who the state want to punish.Usually the punishment is done using a stick or cane. I have no evidence to support that this actually happens to boys in school nowadays.

Was it at the same school where birching girls was common practice in the 1970s?

No this refers to the Artane Industrial school in Ireland and being a boys school presumably there were no girls being birched there in the 1970's or at any other time.
Please read the account by Touher freely and widely available in bookshops.

Oh dear! Yet another joke falls on fallow ground.

Moving on...if anybody has any relevant comments to the original post made it might be of interest to myself and others.
It can be so boring sifting through all the insane tatt that gets posted on this site.

Happy to know more details, and thanks Lee for posting, but can you tell us what the book details are by Touher, please?

author Patrick Touher
title Fear of the Collar