A former TD for Waterford has said it was not true that he told an RTÉ reporter in 2016 he had been asked to help suppress discussion in the media of convicted paedophile Bill Kenneally.
Dr Donie Ormonde was giving evidence to a commission of investigation established to examine the response of State and other agencies to allegations against the 72-year-old former sports coach.
Kenneally, a member of a well-known Waterford Fianna Fáil family, is currently in jail for multiple child sex-abuse offences committed between 1979 and 1990.
A verbal admission of child sex abuse was made by him to a senior garda in 1987, but his first conviction was not until many years later. The Garda inquiry in the late 1980s did not continue because a victim did not want to give a statement.
Questioned by Patrick McCann SC, for the commission, Dr Ormonde said it was not true he had told former RTÉ correspondent for the southeast Damien Tiernan that he, Dr Ormonde, had been contacted by Kenneally’s uncle, Monsignor John Shine, and asked how publicity about his nephew could be suppressed.
Mr McCann read to the witness notes Tiernan took of the conversation he had the car park of the Tower Hotel in Waterford in March 2016 with Dr Ormonde.
The notes, Mr McCann said, indicated Dr Ormonde told the journalist that Msgr Shine had called him in 2013, soon after a report about Kenneally had appeared in The Irish Times, and asked how the facts that were emerging about his nephew might be kept from the public.
“That’s not true,” said Dr Ormonde. “And even if he did, I was yesterday’s man. I wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway.”
Dr Ormonde, a retired consultant radiologist, was a Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford from 1982 to 1987 and a senator between 1989 and 1993. He was also a member of the South Eastern Health Board and a former chairman of the Havenwood Nursing Home in Waterford.
He told Mr McCann that he got a call on his mobile phone from Msgr Shine in 2013 to ask if he could help secure a bed in the nursing home for Msgr Shine’s unmarried sister, whose name he could not remember. The call came shortly after the report in The Irish Times. “It was the elephant in the room.”
He said when Msgr Shine mentioned the newspaper report he, Dr Ormonde, replied that he “did not want to go there” and there was no further discussion of the matter. He believed Msgr Shine’s sister got a bed in the home two weeks later.
He said the first time he had heard of Kenneally being linked to child sex abuse was when the report appeared in The Irish Times and that he was “shocked”. He had not heard any “rumours” prior to that.
Barra McCrory KC, for some of the victims of Kenneally, said Mr Tiernan had taken contemporaneous notes of his conversation with Dr Ormonde while he, Dr Ormonde, was relying on memory.
Dr Ormonde said the notes recorded him saying he had received a call from Maire Shine, Msgr Shine’s sister, but he was “emphatic” that he had never had a conversation with Maire Shine, (Ms Shine was Kenneally’s mother). “I never met Maire Shine in my entire life.”
He said he could not explain how the journalist came to note he had said Msgr Shine had raised the issue of keeping Kenneally out of the media or that he had made negative comments about the monsignor. He said he would have no difficulty with the commission getting access to his phone records from 2013 or 2016.
The tribunal has heard evidence that Msgr Shine was told as far back as 1987 that Kenneally had admitted child sex abuse.
A retired psychiatrist, Richard Horgan, said he had no memory of seeing Bill Kenneally and disputed evidence heard from former Fianna Fáil TD, Brendan Kenneally, that he, Brendan Kenneally, had been told by Msgr Shine in 2001 that his cousin Bill Kenneally had seen Dr Horgan and been told that he did not have to be seen again.
Dr Horgan said he would not have said, as alleged, that Mr Kenneally was unlikely to offend again or to give, as alleged, a verbal report on a patient. If he had seen Mr Kenneally, which he had no memory of so doing, it would only have been if he had been properly referred by a GP and there was no record of any referral. He said it was “highly unlikely” that he had seen Bill Kenneally and forgotten.
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