A “scoping exercise” into convicted sex offender and former hospital consultant Michael Shine, described in the Dáil as “the most prolific paedophile in Europe” is expected to take up to 16 weeks.
Conducted by senior counsel Lorcan Staines, the scoping exercise, which began in March, could ultimately lead to a formal inquiry.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the Dáil the total number of those impacted is believed to be “in the high hundreds and it ranges across a huge age span”.
Shine worked in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda from 1964 until 1995. In March that year the chief executive of the hospital was informed of a complaint of abuse against him by the North Eastern Health Board. He took leave while the complaint was addressed and subsequently retired in October 1995.
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By the time of his retirement, he was already the subject of multiple allegations of sexual abuse, going back as far as the 1970s.
He was convicted in 2017 and 2019 of sexual offences and in 2020 he was convicted of assaulting seven boys between 1971 and 1992. He served three years in prison.
The Minister announced the scoping exercise into the controversy following a meeting in November last year with the Co Louth-based charity Dignity4Patients, which supports more than 390 survivors.
She said after the scoping exercise “the next steps will proceed with independence, with compassion and with a trauma-informed approach”.
Carroll MacNeill paid tribute “to the many, many hundreds of men across Meath and Louth who have been impacted and who I know will be impacted yet again today as we discuss this”.
“Our commitment is to ensure that a process that recognises the suffering experienced, honours the voices of victims and survivors and seeks a path towards truth and healing.”
But she said: “I always worry that no matter what we do there will be that we will disappoint, that some people won’t find the justice they hope for.”
She added: “There is ongoing work that I’m not in a position to discuss, because it has some of it has to go back to Cabinet, and obviously I can’t breach confidentiality.”
Sinn Féin Louth TD Joanna Byrne, who described Shine as Europe’s “most prolific paedophile”, said there was a clear demand for a public inquiry “to allow the full truth to emerge”.
While she welcomed the scoping exercise, she said “we need to know at the end of this process precisely the detail of the crimes that Michael Shine committed”.
“But we also need to know who knew, and at what stage they knew, and how in God’s name this was allowed to continue for so long that so many young lives were destroyed.”
Byrne said reports of sexual abuse by Shine were made to hospital authorities as early as 1964.
“Victims have stated that this was an open secret at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, but nobody batted an eyelid.”
She paid tribute to a nurse, Bernadette Sullivan, who in 1995 “stepped forward and made a formal complaint. This was the beginning of Michael Shine’s well-overdue downfall and exposure as the most prolific paedophile in Europe.
“She’s been called a whistleblower. She is, in fact, a hero.”
Louth TD Ged Nash, a long-term campaigner on the scandal, said Shine spent “a short time behind bars, but that does not accountability make.”
The Drogheda-based TD said “the spectre of Michael Shine hangs over my home town. He was probably one of the most prolific sex offenders in Europe.
“Many men have gone to their grave without getting any shred of accountability.”
