Posted by Sunday, 1 March 2026 11:30
By Ruth O’Connell
The support group now represents 400 people who say they were abused by the disgraced surgeon
The support group for those who were abused by Michael Shine has welcomed the appointment of a facilitator aimed at establishing a public statutory inquiry.
The disgraced surgeon worked as a consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and in private practice in Drogheda served three years in prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting a number of young boys.
Senior Counsel Lorcan Staines has been appointed to work as a facilitator and will begin his work next Tuesday.
Dignity4 Patients now represents 400 abuse survivors – 398 men and two women.
Its CEO Adrienne Reilly is welcoming the news:
“We’re delighted that the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, has actioned the promise that she made the victims last November to set up a scoping exercise, and into then fully realising a statutory public inquiry into Michael Shine and institutions around the sexual abuse of him on hundreds and hundreds of young boys and men in Drogheda.
So we’re very pleased that it’s going to start next Tuesday. We have been working with the Minister and her officials since last November, discussing how we could proceed.
What hasn’t been announced yet is that we’ll also be working alongside Professor Phil Scraton and he’s a human rights expert on inquiries and inquests, and Maeve Lewis, the former director of One in Four, who’s a sexual violence expert and has worked on the scoping inquiry into religious schools.
So they will work alongside the victims and survivors and ourselves and Lorcan Staines, and we’ll progress with a 16-week scoping exercise looking at how we’ll set up this statutory public inquiry.
So listen, it’s been decades and decades of a battle and it’s finally starting.”
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