FIANNA FÁIL JUNIOR Minister and government chief whip Mary Butler has said that the party’s former TD Brendan Kenneally has resigned his membership. 

It follows the publication of a major state inquiry examining child sexual abuse complaints regarding his cousin, Bill Kenneally, in recent days.

Waterford TD Butler revealed the resignation during an interview on local radio station WLR on Friday morning.

Butler said that Brendan Kenneally had given up his membership “voluntarily” and declined to say more on the issue, citing GDPR regulations.

“He ceased to be a member of the party when the report was published,” Butler said.

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She added that she didn’t believe she should have asked Brendan Kenneally to “step away from Fianna Fáil” before now, because “Brendan played a very, very small role” in the party locally after he lost his own seat in 2011.

The former TD had gone public almost a decade ago about being aware of the abuses, before the inquiry was established, and continued assisting with Butler’s election efforts until pressure from victims led to him stepping aside in 2020.

When asked if she had ever queried Brendan about the case after the sports coach was sentenced and further details became known, Butler told the programme that she had not because “it wasn’t my business to ask”.

When contacted for comment on Friday, Fianna Fáil told The Journal that a “party official spoke to Mr Brendan Kenneally and he resigned his membership of the party” on the day the inquiry report was published.

The party added that the Taoiseach will meet with survivors next week.

Child abuser’s death

Bill Kenneally – from Laragh, Summerville Avenue, Waterford – was a former tallyman and canvasser for Fianna Fáil for decades and a part of the powerful Kenneally political dynasty in the city.

He died on Thursday at Midlands Prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence for the abuse of 15 boys, just days after the publication of the state report. 

After Bill Kenneally was sentenced in 2016, his victims launched a campaign to find out how different authorities and leadership figures within the area had failed to bring their abuser to justice for decades.

The inquiry report into the case was published last week.

Amongst the findings, the former high court judge who heading up the inquiry wrote in his report how the partner of one of the former victims of Bill Kenneally had contacted Brendan in 2001 to tell him about the abuse. 

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Brendan Kenneally did not report this to any formal agencies but instead sought to arrange psychiatric treatment for his cousin. 

This course of action, the report found, at “the very least fell substantially below the standards the Commission would expect from a TD of Mr Kenneally’s experience”.

The Commission reported that “it cannot definitively on the balance of probabilities establish knowledge by Brendan Kenneally of Bill Kenneally’s sexual abuse of boys prior to 2001”.

Butler was asked on radio this morning if her party would offer an apology to victims as has been sought by campaigners.

She said Fianna Fáil had not been “implicated as an organisation” and that survivors would receive a state apology in the Dáil in the coming weeks.

Butler offered a personal apology for any “trauma, distress or hurt” that she has caused Bill Kenneally’s abuse survivors.

Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said on Thursday that the victims of Bill Kenneally’s abuse would receive an official state apology no later than July.