As 146 men claim they were sexually abused as young patients by Michael Shine, it has emerged the retired Lourdes Hospital consultant is being paid a €90,000 annual pension by the HSE. Shine, who was not present in the Four Courts last Monday when the president of the High Court ordered he be struck off the practitioners' register by the Medical Council, is believed to be in Spain where, like his old hospital colleague Michael Neary, he owns a house.

Since Monday, the nurse who raised the alarm about Shine's 30-year career as a consultant surgeon in Drogheda has been contacted by men from all over the country claiming the 71-year-old native of Golden, Co Tipperary, sexually abused them as children and young adults. She is aware of 146 victims, many of whom have never made a formal complaint to the authorities. The assaults ranged from one-off episodes to sustained abuse over several months.

It has also come to light that after Shine returned to work at the Drogheda hospital on 8 August 1995, having been cleared by an internal inquiry despite still being under garda investigation, he continued to receive patient referrals from a boys' school in the area. He retired at the end of 1995 on a full pension. Yet, the hospital's then proprietors, the Medical Missionaries of Mary, should have sacked him in 1995 under the terms of the consultants' contract when they learned he had failed to inform them he was the subject of a criminal investigation, as was required in law.

Supporting public calls made last week by senator Dominic Hannigan and TDs Damien English and Johnny Brady for a full state inquiry into the Shine scandal, the nurse cautioned: "Its terms of reference would have to include the Garda Síochána, the Department of Health, the DPP, the Chief State Solicitor's Office, and the whole criminal justice system..."

Questions have arisen about the criminal justice investigation and prosecution of Shine, acquitted in Dundalk Circuit Court on charges relating to six complainants in October 2003. He came to trial almost a decade after the first complaints about him were made to gardaí. Appeals were made in vain to have the garda investigation and the trial transferred out of the Louth district where he was regarded as an eminent local figure.

Collegiality was a hallmark of the process as nurses in the hospital signed a petition in his support and submitted it to investigating gardaí. At the trial, 13 medical staff members at the Lourdes, including consultants and ward sisters, testified in his favour. A former patient of Shine's along with an employee of the Northeastern Health Board (where he was a board member up to 1995), and the daughter of a former patient of his all sat on the jury. When a juror was taken ill during his trial, Shine, a former director of James Connolly Memorial hospital in Blanchardstown and of the forerunner to the National Hospitals' Office, offered her his medical opinion across the floor of the courtroom.

One of the six men whose allegations resulted in Shine's acquittal claims a nurse he mentioned in his garda statement as someone who could corroborate his evidence was never interviewed by gardaí. The same man's psychologist says, despite attending the trial in the expectation of testifying, she was not called to the witness box either.

"I was so disillusioned with everything after the court case," says another one of the six men who claims Shine abused him in 1976 when he was referred for verrucas on his feet.

"I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I'd waited nearly 10 years for the trial. I was in the witness box for about an hour." Another man, whose case did not feature in the trial but was part of the Medical Council's fitness-to-practise committee's inquiry, says: "This is one of the most baffling things: how he's dragged this out and laughed at us. You get so angry. It's no wonder fathers of raped girls take the law into their own hands."

The first civil actions against Shine will come before the courts next year. Meanwhile, untested garda case files lie dormant in the criminal justice system. His name is not on the sex offenders' register.

He is an elected member of the residents' management committee of the Dublin 4 apartment block he calls home, located opposite a boys' primary and secondary school. Asked about his €90,000 pension, a HSE spokeswoman said: "When an employee makes contributions to a superannuation scheme, they're entitled to receive a pension on retirement."

In 2003, the year of his trial, Shine wrote a formal letter of complaint to the RTÉ Authority about a Late Late Show item dealing with the hysterectomy spree conducted by his erstwhile Lourdes Hospital colleague, Michael Neary.

Shine's victims are preparing to meet a group of cross-party politicians to discuss what happens next.