CHILD ABUSER Bill Kenneally has died.

The Waterford man, who was one of Ireland’s worst sex predators, had been under palliative care in recent weeks and had had part of a leg amputated.

He died in the early hours of this morning under the care of the prison service medical staff.

The 75-year-old was serving a near 20-year term in the Midlands Prison.

The Irish Prison Service confirmed that there had been a death of a person in custody at Midlands Prison earlier Thursday morning. The cause of death will be determined by the Coroner’s Office and next of kin have been informed, the prison service told The Journal.

Kenneally’s death comes just days after the publication of a major state report into his abuses and how authorities dealt with reports of his crimes in the decades before he was finally brought to justice.

It found the failure of two senior local gardaí in Waterford to conduct a proper investigation into the activities of Kenneally was “a clear and serious dereliction of duty” even by the standards of the late 1980s.

Reacting to the death, Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan said that “justice was done” on Kenneally during his life given he was brought before the courts and convicted of “very serious and heinous” offenses.

“There’s a tradition in Ireland that we don’t speak ill of the dead, but I have to say it’s hard to stick to that tradition in respect of the death of Bill Keneally, and that’s all I’ll say in respect to that,” O’Callaghan said.

O’Callaghan, who met with victims this week, told reporters this morning that he is committed to ensuring a State apology is provided to survivors for the abuse they suffered by July.

Missed opportunity to stop abuser

The Commission of Investigation’s report found that there was “a missed opportunity” to act in 1985 after a 14-year-old boy walked into a garda station and reported he had been sexually assaulted by Kenneally.

The teenager was told that he was too young to make a statement and no steps were taken to contact his parents or bring him home.

The Commission of Investigation report stated it is now known that 11 boys were being sexually abused by Kenneally in the same year the boy tried to make his complaint.

In 2016, the serial abuser was jailed for 14 years, and in 2023, received another four-and-a-half year sentence for indecent assaults on five boys, to run consecutively to the earlier term.

Commission Chairman, Michael White, said that while “there is no doubt Bill Kenneally received objectively favourable treatment in 1987/1988,” there was “no evidence of widespread collusion that would indicate any finding by the Commission of State Collusion and/or Conspiracy”.

He added that this finding “is not to underestimate in any way the seriousness of the dereliction of duty in the original investigation of 1987/1988″.

• Profile of a predator: Report finds Kenneally was ‘intelligent and manipulative and an expert at grooming children’ >

The report, which marked the end of an eight-year Commission of Investigation, found that in late 1987, “knowledge of some of his activities became known in Waterford to two senior Garda officers, and some other gardaí, the Principal of the largest secondary school, De La Salle, a retired politician, a senior clergyman, a psychiatrist, and to some parents of victims”.

In addition, a senior South Eastern Health Board paediatrician, a GP and other parents were informed of matters that made them suspicious that Kenneally sexually abused children.

Kenneally was a relative of several politicians who were part of the Kenneally dynasty in the Waterford area, and acted as a tallyman and canvasser for Fianna Fáil for decades.

With reporting by Niall O’Connor, Eoghan Dalton and Cara McHugh