Local Labour TD Ged Nash has expressed his support for calls made by the Dignity4Patients group and individual survivors for a statutory Commission of Inquiry into the actions of convicted paedophile and former surgeon, Michael Shine.

The patients group are seeking a Commission of Investigation to probe claims that health and religious authorities failed to stop the abuse in what was one of the country's worst ever child sex abuse scandals.

Hundreds of men claim that they were abused by over many years by the former surgeon who is now aged 93, but he has served only three years in prison thanks largely to the delaying tactics adopted by his legal team.

“I want to commend the men who came forward, who waived their anonymity and spoke so courageously to the entire country about their experiences” Deputy Nash said.

“Their courage should be responded to by this government in the form of a statutory Commission of Inquiry into the actions, over many decades, of one of Ireland’s most notorious convicted paedophiles, and how a myriad of bodies responsible for running our health service and for dispensing justice managed to, in effect turn, a collective blind eye.

“This is not the first time I have called for a Commission of Inquiry in this regard. I know many of the survivors. They are contemporaries and many are friends. Shine was notorious to my generation of boys and men from Drogheda and across the North-East.

“Survivors have been cruelly let down by the authorities and the State time and time again. There has been no real justice and true accountability for the countless survivors. It is long past time that a Commission of Inquiry was established and for justice to be done.”