‘He said a curtain was pulled and he believes he was just wearing his underpants at this point’

It went on for a few minutes,” he said.

The witness said that the accused was watching the door during all this, telling the jury: ‘I knew there was something not right. I didn’t know what to make of him.’

Mr Hartnett put it to this witness that the hospital records from 1976 stated that he was treated by consultant Mr MD Sheehan. He said records of an insurance claim from the time taken against the other driver in the crash stated that the other driver’s insurers had arranged for a medical examination in November.

The letter, addressed to the complainant, stated that: ‘Dr Shine will examine you in consultation with Mr Sheehan’. The witness said he couldn’t remember that and stated that he never met Dr Shine apart from the two times he described.

A fourth complainant told the jury that sometime in 1975 or 1976 he attended at the hospital with an ingrown toenail. He was aged around 15 or 16 at the time.

He met Dr Shine by appointment as well as a female assistant, who he assumed was a nurse. He said he was made to lie prostrate on a bed which he thought was strange.