THE PATRIARCH OF the clan, William Kenneally, topped the poll in the 1954 General Election with 7,777 votes.
Thereafter family members considered seven ‘a lucky number’.
They made no secret of this.
One arm of the Kenneally successful business empire was the Kenneally family bus company. Every bus in the fleet had the number seven in its registration plate.
Bill Kenneally was a numbers man too. He was an accountant by trade.
The report of the commission set up to investigate his years of abuse documents how, after assaulting the boys, he would give them money in uneven denominations ending in seven.
The Biblical association between the number seven and the deadly sins seems cruelly ironic here.
Victims have often referred to this powerful political clan as ‘the Kennedys of Waterford’.
In his report into the abuse perpetrated by Bill Kenneally, published this week, chairman of the commission the retired high court judge Michael White uses the term ‘a political dynasty’ when depicting their rise to power.
White defined the concept of a ‘political dynasty’ as a phenomenon in Irish political life “that was the child and or grandchild of a prominent Dáil deputy succeeding as the nominated candidate and being elected”.
Six decade dynasty
For almost 60 years the Kenneally family, William, the grandfather, his son Billy Senior and Billy’s son Brendan Kenneally were elected Waterford politicians either as TDs, Senators, City Councillors and Mayors from 1952 to 2011.
The Kenneally family’s succession in Irish politics was described in the Report as “a significant achievement probably unparalleled in Irish political life”.
‘Bill Kenneally the paedophile’, could very easily have also been ‘Bill Kenneally the politician’, it emerged during the inquiry’s hearings.
Fianna Fáil had offered him a seat on Waterford City Council after his cousin Brendan Kenneally was forced to vacate his council seat when he was appointed a Minister of State in 1992, Bill Kenneally alleged during his testimony in a 2024 public hearing into his abuse.
With a grin, he bragged that he had even been told that he would become the mayor in a matter of a couple of years.
Much to the shock of his victims, who sat just yards away watching in disgust during that public hearing, Kenneally said that he was “twisted to take it,” but he declined “for fear of opening a can of worms”. He did not say who had made the approach.
He told the Commission: “I would have been mayor if I wanted it. I said ‘no,’ because I was afraid that if I did go into politics, things would blow up.”
Instead, he played a prominent role in the election campaigns for other members of the Kenneally family who enjoyed decades of success at the polls.
TDs, mayors and clergymen
William Kenneally was born in 1899 in Villierstown, a village in west County Waterford. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in a by-election in 1952. He was re-elected at the 1954 and 1957 general elections, topping the poll on each occasion.
In 1961, William Kenneally stepped aside, making room for his son Billy Kenneally Senior to stand, who narrowly failed to get elected. But it wouldn’t be long before he, as chairman Michael White put it, “continued the successful dynasty”.
At the 1965 general election he successfully followed in his father’s footsteps to Leinster House. He retained his seat during the four subsequent general elections.
Even after losing out at the general election in 1982 he did not bid farewell to Kildare Street as he was elected to the Administrative panel in Seanad Éireann in that same year.
He chose not to contest the 1983 Seanad and focussed instead on his role as a Waterford City Councillor. The following year he was elected Mayor, having previously held the mayorship in 1976.
Just a year later, his son Brendan Kenneally first stood for electoral office in 1985 when he was elected to Waterford City Council at the age of 30.
This was, coincidentally, the same year that a 14-year-old boy, reported to gardaí that he had been sexually abused by Bill Kenneally and was told that he was too young to make a statement. He was just left to walk home alone. Nobody acted on his complaint. Nobody even drove him home.
Brendan Kenneally was Mayor of Waterford City in 1988 and in 1989 he was elected to Dáil Éireann.
He was re-elected in the 1992 and 1997 general elections. Between 1992 and 1993 he was the Minister of State at the Department of Tourism, Transport and Communications.
After losing his seat in 2002, he became a senator on the nomination of the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. However, Brendan Kenneally would return to the Dáil after the 2007 general election. That would be his final term in office. After losing his seat at the 2011 general election, he retired from politics.
Bill Kenneally continued to canvas for Brendan Kenneally at elections and assist in the tally at election counts for decades after Billy Kenneally Senior, Bill Kenneally’s uncle, first learned that he was sexually abusing boys.
During a public hearing of the Commission in 2024, Brendan Kenneally accepted in evidence that, knowing Bill Kenneally was an admitted paedophile, he continued to allow him to canvas for him at general elections and to act as a tallyman at election counts.
‘Shock and anger’
At a press conference at Buswells Hotel, just a stone’s throw away from Leinster House, victim Barry Murphy this week recalled the shock and anger that he and his wife Linda felt after Bill Kenneally knocked on their front door while canvassing before he was convicted and sent to prison.
Outside of politics, the Kenneallys owned and operated a number of licensed premises.
The business was run as a partnership ‘P&W Kenneally’ between Billy Kenneally Senior and Bill Kenneally’s father Paddy.
Some Waterford constituents have recalled being invited into the bar to make applications for council houses or medical cards, at the direction of the Kenneallys.
While Bill Kenneally’s father Paddy’s side of the family were steeped in politics, his uncle on his mother Marie’s side of the family was, as described by chairman Michael White, “a senior clergyman with a distinguished career”.
Monsignor John Shine was Professor of Canon Law and Moral Theology at St John’s College Seminary at John’s Hill Waterford. He became Vice President from 1971 to 1974 and President from 1974 to 1980, until the seminary closed.
He was appointed Parish Priest of Tramore in 1980. In that same year he became Vicar General of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, a role he held until 1993.
Monsignor John Shine died in 2017, months after it emerged that he knew his nephew was abusing children as far back as 1987, when he accompanied him to a meeting with gardaí where he admitted to his crimes.
‘Prominent public figures’
One of the Commission’s greatest challenges was examining an investigation conducted in the 1980s against the backdrop of the standards and expectations that Irish society now placed on An Garda Síochána, while remaining mindful of the legal framework and policing practices that prevailed at the time.
Notwithstanding this, the report outlines how it is “the Commission’s considered opinion applying the criteria applicable in 1987″ that gardaí had the power to “have Bill Kenneally arrested, have his dwelling and car searched, and have him detained pursuant to Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984″.
The act had at that point commenced and permitted arrest and detention for interrogation.
But that never happened.
Instead, the then acting chief superintendent in Waterford, Sean Cashman, contacted Bill Kenneally’s uncles who were described in the report as “prominent public figures in Waterford”.
It is also noted in the report that “a scandal involving their nephew being made public was not an attractive prospect to them”.
Michael White is highly critical of Cashman’s decision to contact then-retired TD Billy Kenneally and Monsignor John Shine, Bill Kenneally’s two uncles:
“There was no need to do that, nor was any thought given to the implications.
These uncles – a retired prominent politician and a revered man of the cloth – escorted their paedophile nephew to Waterford Garda Station for that fateful meeting in 1987.
The Commission also found that even before Bill Kenneally stepped inside the station, acting chief superintendent Sean Cashman had “decided to deal with the information in his possession in a certain way, which was to give Bill Kenneally a warning about his behaviour and refer him for psychiatric treatment or counselling”.
Despite this, the now long-retired Sean Cashman insisted to the Commission that he “wanted to bring this man to justice to be dealt with by the courts and I had no worries at all about the connection of the Kenneallys with politics but … the best help, assistance that I got during the investigation was from his uncle, that’s the reality.”
Michael White decried this claim, insisting that “his compliments of Billy Kenneally, the ex-TD and Senator who did nothing, were tone deaf.”
Fast-forward 14 years after that “unprofessional, rushed and inappropriate” investigation and the partner of one of Bill Kenneally’s victims contacted Brendan Kenneally, then a sitting TD, to tell him about the abuse in 2001.
But Brendan Kenneally did not report this to any formal agencies. Instead, he turned to his father, Billy Kenneally, for advice, who in turn told him to contact Monsignor John Shine. Psychiatric treatment was arranged…again.
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”.
The report also notes that, in that year, three influential members of the extended Kenneally family now had knowledge of Bill Kenneally’s crimes: Billy Kenneally, Brendan Kenneally and Shine.
“In 2001 the retired politician, his son an elected politician, and the senior clergyman all became aware that he had continued to sexually abuse after being interviewed by Gardaí and warned about his behaviour on 30th December 1987.”
A full Garda investigation into Bill Kenneally began in 2012 and he was jailed in 2016. Now in his mid-70s, in poor health, and serving a near-20 year term, it’s expected he’ll die in prison.