THE DECISION by the Medical Council to find former surgeon Michael Shine guilty of professional misconduct and strike his name off the medical register followed a 12-day inquiry by its fitness to practise committee.
The council said yesterday that the inquiry concluded on July 21st last with the committee finding him guilty of professional misconduct in his dealings with three patients while he was practising as a consultant general surgeon in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.
It added that on October 30th last the fitness to practise committee decision was endorsed by a meeting of the full Medical Council, which decided to erase his name from the medical register.
Mr Shine had 21 days to appeal the decision but he chose not to do so.
Medical Council decisions have to be confirmed by the High Court and the High Court president did this yesterday.
Mr Shine worked at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital from 1964 until 1995, when he retired on a full pension following a number of complaints against him in relation to the alleged sexual assault and indecent assault of young male patients. The first complaint was lodged with the Garda in 1994.
The Health Service Executive said yesterday the former north eastern health board took over the hospital from the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMMs) only in 1997.
But in relation to the High Court decision in the Shine case, the HSE said: "We welcome the conclusion of this matter."
Asked to comment on the decision and how it dealt with complaints against Mr Shine over the years, the MMMs in Drogheda said yesterday nobody was available for comment.
Sheila O'Connor of Patient Focus, the group that has supported a number of men who made complaints against Mr Shine, said her group was very pleased the matter had reached a conclusion and that the men who complained had been vindicated. "It's gone on for 14 years, which by any standard is absolutely scandalous," she said.
She called for the transcripts of the fitness to practise inquiry to be made public, saying this was very important to the men who were abused. The Medical Council failed to reply to queries yesterday on whether it plans to do this.
Meanwhile, Ms O'Connor said a number of staff at the Lourdes hospital had given evidence by way of character references on Mr Shine's behalf when he was tried at Dundalk Circuit Criminal Court in 2003 for indecently assaulting a number of young men. He was acquitted on all charges.
"We believe the same collegiality existed in this case as did in other cases in the same hospital and that is totally unacceptable," she said.
Judge Maureen Harding Clark referred to this collegiality in her Lourdes Hospital inquiry report in 2006 when she investigated how a high number of Caesarean hysterectomies could be carried out by Michael Neary at the same hospital over a period of years without anyone shouting stop. Mr Neary has also been struck off.
A nurse who worked at the Lourdes hospital at the time told yesterday of how badly she was treated by hospital management and the MMMs after she raised concerns about Mr Shine's conduct in the early 1990s. She told RTÉ's Drivetimethat there were a lot of untrue and malicious rumours circulated about her. She said that in early 1994 a man told her he had complained to gardaí about being abused by Mr Shine in the hospital. She was concerned Mr Shine was still working in the hospital and looked at different ways of reporting the abuse to the hospital. She called the Medical Council, who were "very unhelpful" and when she told the Irish Nurses' Organisation the legal advice was she could be sued. Even when Mr Shine retired in October 1995 after further complaints were lodged, he continued to see private patients, she said.
