Survivors of serial sex abuser Bill Kenneally have welcomed the decision by Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan to consider introducing a criminal offence of misconduct in public office.One of the survivors, Jason Clancy, said O’Callaghan confirmed to him and fellow survivors at a meeting on Tuesday that he was keen to remedy a deficiency in the law identified in a Commission of Investigation report on the State response to abuse by Kenneally in the 1980s. He is to request that the Law Reform Commission examine the issue.Judge Michael White, Commission of Investigation chair, noted in his report last week that then acting Chief Supt Sean Cashman and Supt PJ Hayes were derelict in their duty to properly investigate a complaint of abuse made in 1987 against Kenneally, who later went on to abuse other boys.However, he noted that the evidence against Cashman, who is now in his 90s, and Hayes, who is deceased, was not sufficient to merit a prosecution for intending to pervert the course of justice, given there was no evidence of corruption but simply that they had failed to do their dutyClancy, along with fellow survivors Colin Power, Kevin Keating, Barry Murphy, Paul Walsh, Simon O’Toole, and another survivor who has not waived his right to anonymity, had a 45-minute meeting with O’Callaghan on Tuesday.“[He] told us he had the Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly in with him on Monday and he went through the report with him, and he said that they were both equally horrified at what it found in terms of the dereliction by senior gardaí in 1987,” he said. “He told us... he’s already forwarded Judge White’s report to the Law Reform Commission, and they are going to fix that deficiency in the law about people failing to do their duty properly, otherwise that report will just be gathering dust.”Clancy said the meeting with O’Callaghan was “unbelievably positive” – although they had drawn up a list of issues with their lawyers to raise, O’Callaghan took control of the meeting and, unprompted, addressed all their concerns.[ Minister for Justice meets Bill Kenneally victims and promises formal State apologyOpens in new window ]“By the time he had finished speaking, he had addressed them all – he said, ‘State apology – I’m giving you a ministerial apology here and now and I am so, so sorry – we are working on a State apology, I can’t give you that now, it has to go through a process and that process is under way,’” Clancy said.No time frame on the Law Reform Commission work was offered during the meeting. “He didn’t give us any guarantees that nothing like this [dereliction of duty identified by the judge in the report] will ever happen again, but to be honest I don’t think he can do that because he is relying on people to do their duty and not be corrupt and he has no control over that.” Clancy said the only response was to introduce legislation in a bid to rule out further such dereliction.