allegations | 

Ex-Fianna Fáil TD denies being asked by cleric to suppress story on child abuser

Kenneally, a former sports coach, is serving a total of almost 19 years in prison for the abuse of 15 young boys in Waterford between 1979 and 1990.

Today at 18:12

Former Fianna Fail TD and Senator Dr Donie Ormonde has denied claims he was asked by a senior member of the clergy to suppress details about convicted child abuser Bill Kenneally from the public.

Kenneally, a former sports coach, is serving a total of almost 19 years in prison for the abuse of 15 young boys in Waterford between 1979 and 1990.

In 2023, he was jailed for four-and-a-half years for abusing five boys.

That sentence will begin after he is finished serving a previous sentence of 14 years and two months for the abuse of ten other boys.

This morning, in evidence given to the commission of inquiry into allegations of impropriety in the case of Bill Kenneally, Dr Ormonde said he did not tell former RTÉ journalist Damien Tiernan that Monsignor John Shine, who was Kenneally’s uncle, asked him to “get the story suppressed” after it first broke in the media in April 2013.

“Monsignor Shine never asked me to do anything” Dr Ormonde said.

“Even if he did, I was yesterday’s man. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

During evidence given to the Commission in September 2023, Damien Tiernan claimed that in 2016, Mr Ormonde told him he been asked three years previously by Monsignor Shine to keep details of the case away from the public.

Mr Tiernan alleged that the phone call between the now-deceased monsignor and Mr Ormonde had taken place in the wake of a 2013 Irish Times report which contained details of the historic abuse carried out by Kenneally.

Dr Ormonde said the only conversation he ever had with the Monsignor was when he asked him to secure a bed for his unmarried sister in a nursing home where Dr Ormonde was a board member.

It was during that conversation that the monsignor asked him if he had seen “the Irish Times article” about his nephew.

“I said, ‘Yes Monsignor Shine, but I would rather not go there’,” Dr Ormonde told the Commission.

He said that was a far as the conversation about Kenneally went.

Dr Ormonde denied that he had arranged to meet Mr Tiernan in a hotel carpark, but said rather that he bumped into him by chance.

He also told the commission of inquiry that he was never made aware of any allegations or complaints against Kenneally until they appeared in media reports.

The commission heard from another former Fianna Fáil TD last September, Kenneally’s cousin Brendan Kenneally, who said he was “not trying to sweep it under the carpet” when he did not go to gardaí after first being told of abuse perpetrated by Bill Kenneally back in 2001.

This was after a constituent had visited his office and told him two boys had been abused by Bill Kenneally. She told him of a boy known to her who had been stripped, tied to a tree, and photographed by Bill Kenneally.

Brendan Kenneally said he was “horrified” by what he was told and had then spoken to his father, who was aware of allegations against Bill Kenneally.

His father had told him to talk to Monsignor Shine, an uncle of Bill Kenneally’s, who responded with words to the effect of “oh, not again”.