By Damien Tiernan, with copy from Eoghan Dalton from the Journal.ie
WLR has been told that child abuser Bill Kenneally is due to give evidence in the new year to a Commission investigating him and some of those around him.
Eoghan Dalton from the Journal.ie told Deise Today that Kenneally, who is currently serving a sentence for sexual abuse against a number of boys in the past, will be the “very last witness” to be called before the hearing.
The Commission of Investigation was sitting in Dublin on Wednesday.
Mr Justice White, who is presiding over the inquiry, told those present there are ten to 15 witnesses in total, including a former school principal, who are yet to give evidence.
He said it had been difficult scheduling a number of those.
Earlier this summer Bill Kenneally received a four-and-a-half-year sentence for abusing five boys on unknown dates between 1979 and 1990. He was aged between his 20s and 40s when carrying out the abuse. The 72-year-old accountant, from Summerville Avenue, Waterford, had already been serving a 14-year sentence for abusing ten boys from 1984 to 1987.
The commission, sitting in the Law Library in Dublin, is examining allegations of collusion between An Garda Síochána, the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, the former South Eastern Health Board, Basketball Ireland, and unnamed “political figures”.
Former Fianna Fail TD in Waterford Brendan Kenneally said he will provide the inquiry with a long letter he received from his cousin Bill Kenneally.
The journal.ie reported that during further cross-examination before the Commission of Investigation in Dublin, Brendan Kenneally said that he received the letter in recent years, sometime after his relative was imprisoned, but said he has never opened the letter.
He said the letter came after he met a relative at a family funeral and “made the mistake of asking” how the sex offender was doing in prison in Portlaoise.
“She obviously conveyed that to him,” he said. “He made contact with me then. He wrote a long letter to me, which I haven’t read.”
He was responding to Ray Motherway, a barrister representing two victims of former sports coach Bill Kenneally. When Motherway asked him when he was last in contact with his cousin, Brendan Kenneally said it had been 15 years.
“I’ve had no contact with him since he went into prison,” he said.
Asked by Motherway if he would provide the commission with the letter, Brendan Kenneally said he was open to doing so.
“I’ve no problem if you want it,” he said, “I’ve kept it.”
Brendan Kenneally served as a TD for Waterford in two stints ranging from 1989 to 2011 and as a Minister of State in the early 1990s.
Survivors of his abuse believe Bill Kenneally could have been arrested and charged at a far earlier stage. At a hearing last month, the former TD said that he did not conceal his cousin’s abuse of children to protect any “political ambitions” and that it was not a “family secret” held by members.
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