The Cabinet could approve a scoping inquiry as soon as tomorrow into Michael Shine who worked as a consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth, and was later found guilty of sexual assaults on nine boys.

It is understood that a memorandum is to be brought to the Cabinet by the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, which includes provisions for the scoping inquiry to run for 16 weeks, with a senior counsel to be appointed before Christmas.

This could ultimately lead to a full statutory inquiry, which is what victims groups have been campaigning for.

Shine worked as a senior registrar and later a consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital between 1964 and 1995.

He was found guilty of assaults against nine boys at two trials in 2017 and 2019, before serving three years in prison.

Last year, then taoiseach Simon Harris said the Government would “reflect” on “what action is next appropriate” into the alleged abuses by Shine, after his victims called for a public inquiry into what happened.

Mr Harris said Shine was “a vile paedophile, a prolific abuser who has brought pain and misery to many”.

More than 200 people have settled civil claims against the Medical Missionaries of Mary religious order that oversaw the running of the hospital at that time.

The Chief Executive of Dignity 4 Patients, a group which has worked with around 390 people who say they were abused by Shine, has said survivors have so far given a positive response to the possibility of a scoping exercise.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Adrienne Reilly described a meeting with Ms Carroll MacNeill yesterday as positive and said she was confident that the memo will go before cabinet either tomorrow or next week.

She explained the scoping exercise would involve a number of forms of information gathering.

“It would look at a number of things in relation to information gathering here from some victims, and put together the foundations for a partnership and victim-centred arrangement; through those 16 weeks where we build the foundations for some type of statutory inquiry, we hope at the end of that exercise,” she said.

“I’m hopeful that it will then lead to a full statutory inquiry,” Ms Reilly added, “because everyone deserves to have a voice and tell their story.”

“We need also for the victims to have a voice and for them to be believed, and that is the main thing that they want people to know what happened to them, who failed them, and who should have protected them, and that’s essentially what all statutory inquiries do.”

She said the group has said it will discuss details with all of the survivors, but so far it has only managed to contact a portion of the 390 people it works with.

However, nobody has any interest in this running on for years, she said.

If you have been affected by any issues raised in this story, visit: www.rte.ie/helplines.