REGULAR BUT NOT life-threatening hospital visits, Sunday Mass and home care visits – on sight, Michael Shine’s life is as ordinary as the next 94-year-old’s.

But the former surgeon is also at the centre of Ireland’s latest public inquiry. As a date is awaited for the Commission of Investigation into why nobody stopped his abuse over the decades he worked at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, he continues to live as normal in Dublin 4.

Shine was convicted of assaulting nine boys at two trials in 2017 and 2019, but has been accused of abusing hundreds more.

In 2021, the Court of Appeal ruled that another trial should not be held. One of the reasons for this decision was Shine’s age and health. 

However, Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill accepted the July 2026 recommendation of barrister Lorcan Staines’s scoping inquiry that a Commission of Investigation should commence immediately. 

At the time, on 17 July, she said “it takes a lot” to convince her of the need for such inquiries as they can “go on for many years” but that this case was different because it was “of such public significance” and it hadn’t been “investigated by the state in the way… it should have”. 

The Journal understands that just days later, on 20 July, Shine called an ambulance to take him from his top-floor apartment to St Vincent’s Hospital.

A witness said that he was conscious and “fully lucid” while talking with paramedics when he was wheeled out of the building on a trolley.

The witness confirmed it was at least the third time that Shine required ambulance assistance in recent months. He claimed to The Journal that each visit was in the immediate aftermath of a significant development in the calls for further action by the State against the former doctor.

It is understood that on this occasion he was complaining of an issue with his leg and remained in hospital for a week, receiving physiotherapy as an inpatient.

Victims want Shine to be arrested and interviewed by gardaí in relation to fresh allegations made against him. Gerard Murray, who was abused by Shine as a four-year-old, said he believes “he is signing himself into the hospital every time a story comes out”.

“He is playing a game,” he added. 

In the weeks since, Shine has returned to his Dublin 4 home where he is often seen walking up and down the corridor for exercise. He also regularly attends Mass in a local church, arriving and leaving by taxi. 

At a Mass he attended at the beginning of the month, pictured here, the priest had a message to the congregation: “Love is the only thing that cannot hurt your neighbour.” Shine also shook hands with other Mass goers during the sign of peace liturgical rite.

One of the visitors he receives to his apartment is fellow convicted sex offender John Daly. They became friends while behind bars at the same time Portlaoise Prison. Daly, who has been working as an unofficial carer for Shine, was given a four-year jail sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls on the Luas while en route to a Rihanna concert in 2014. He was jailed again in 2019 for gross indecency charges. It was while serving that sentence that he became acquainted with Shine. 

In November 2017, guilty verdicts for Shine on three counts of assaulting two teenage patients on dates between 1974 and 1976 were handed down by a jury. However, he was granted bail pending an appeal against the conviction.

Shine was eventually jailed for four years in 2019 following a separate case for abusing seven boys in his care over a period of three decades and was released in February 2022.

In an interview with The Journal in May 2025, Shine described his experience in prison as “fine”. He added, “I got on well with everybody”, before confirming that he had stayed in contact with other prisoners and that he was “good friends with everybody”. 

When asked specifically if he had become friends with John Daly, he said: “Yes. He works for me. He works for me three days a week.” 

That work includes cooking meals and cleaning the property.

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Victim response

Another victim of Michael Shine has also expressed his upset that his abuser appears to be living a life uninfringed, despite being described in the Dáil earlier this year as “the most prolific paedophile in Ireland”.

Cianan Murray was among a number of victims who first waived their anonymity in a series of interviews published by The Journal in August 2024.  He said that since then he has kept a small folder that he carries with him at all times to keep track of developments in the fight for an inquiry. 

“The latest number of victims has gone up to 421. When we started this two years ago it was 367, so that’s more than 50 victims who have come forward in just two years,” Cianan said. 

Timeline

Shine worked as a surgeon at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda from 1964 until 1995. The hospital was run by the Medical Missionaries of Mary, until it was sold to the State in 1997.

In spite of the staggering number of allegations against him, only nine of these men have had successful prosecutions in the criminal courts.

He was struck off the Irish Medical Council’s register in 2008, 13 years after the first allegation was made public. 

Currently, there are a number of active cases that gardaí hope the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) will prosecute. Separately, more than two dozen files were sent to the DPP, which it refused to proceed with.

Aside from criminal investigations, there are also several civil actions now pending against Shine.

A start date for the Commission of Investigation has not yet been confirmed.