A couple of weeks ago, as he mulled a run for the Dáil, Dublin gangland figure Gerard Hutch asked his friend Paddy Corcoran if he had a chance.
“The biggest criminals in Ireland are already in there,” Corcoran recalls telling Hutch before referencing the €335,000 spent by the Government on a bike shelter for Leinster House.
It is not an isolated view, and there is some support for Hutch in the north inner city where he grew up and where many members of his family still live. A recent poll in a Sunday newspaper suggested Hutch could get 8 per cent of the vote in the Dublin Central constituency – not enough to get a seat but enough to put some other anti-establishment candidates under pressure.
Corcoran, who is chairman of Corinthians Boxing Club in Summerhill in the inner city, said people in the area will not be put off by Hutch’s criminal past. “He looks after the people in the north inner city who need help. He never looks for praise or anything.”
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Hutch (61), who is known as The Monk due to his reputation for sobriety and quiet living, returned to Dublin on Monday morning with the intention of registering as an independent candidate. He has until Friday to put his papers in. An election official said it will be next Thursday before they are able to confirm who is registered as a candidate.
Through Hutch’s decades-long criminal career, the State has made many attempts to put him behind bars. Usually, Hutch emerged on top.
He got his start in organised crime as part of an inner city gang led by the notorious drug dealer Eamon Kelly before progressing to pulling off some of the biggest heists in the State’s history.
These included the armed robbery of £3 million from the Brinks Allied depot in 1995 and the £1.3 million Marino Mart Robbery in 1987.
Huge resources were devoted to catching Hutch but his meticulous planning meant he was always one step ahead of gardaí.
By the late 1990s Hutch had seemingly retired from criminality and started investing his money in property. Over subsequent years he amassed millions in assets in Ireland and abroad.
A settlement for £2 million with the Criminal Assets Bureau in 2000 for unpaid tax did little to slow him down.
Hutch was drawn back into the frontline of criminality in 2015 when he tried to defuse a simmering feud between his family members and the Kinahan organised crime gang.
This failed and, when his nephew Gary Hutch was murdered by the Kinahans, Hutch allegedly orchestrated the 2016 Regency Hotel attack to eliminate Daniel Kinahan. Kinahan escaped but his friend David Byrne was killed.
He eventually faced trial for the attack last year after being extradited from Spain. His prosecution in the Special Criminal Court mainly relied on the evidence of former Sinn Féin councillor and once-trusted Hutch associate Jonathan Dowdall.
The court found Hutch not guilty of murder after ruling Dowdall was not a reliable witness. However, it stated it believed he had control of the assault rifles used in the attack, offences he was never charged with. Hutch was free to return to Spain and continue running his property empire.
Last month, he began putting it around that he was planning a general election run. The following week, he was arrested in Spain as part of a major money laundering investigation. Hutch’s Clontarf home was also searched and he was remanded in custody in Lanzarote’s Tachiche prison.
He appealed the decision to deny him bail, arguing that he was entitled to return to Ireland to take part in the democratic process. To the surprise of many observers, prosecutors agreed with him and the court ordered his release on a bond of €100,000.
In making its decision, the court relied on EU case law which states political candidates who are facing prosecution but have not yet been convicted should be facilitated to run for election.
For Corcoran, the timing of his arrest raises some questions. “Why did they just arrest him when he decided to run for government?” he asks. “It’s plain and simple, isn’t it?”
There is no evidence of a conspiracy to prevent Hutch from running. The money laundering investigation has been ongoing for at least two years, and it is being led by the Spanish police, not the Irish authorities.
Another belief, one shared by some gardaí, is that Hutch knew he was going to be arrested and started planning a run for office to ensure he got bail. It would not have been the first time he received a tip-off he was going to be arrested. However, there is similarly scant evidence to back this up.
It is also possible Hutch has a sincere desire to serve his community. He has a long history of investing in the area, including buying the Corinthians boxing gym in 1998 and renting it to the club for €1 a year.
It has been speculated that he will use the club as his campaign headquarters, though Corcoran says he has heard nothing about this. “Gerry does his own thing.”
In the unlikely event Hutch is elected, he will be far from the first criminal to take a Dáil seat. As recently as 2020, independent TD Micheal Lowry comfortably topped the poll in Co Tipperary two years after being found guilty of a tax offence.
A number of Sinn Féin TD’s have been elected despite having convictions relating to the Troubles while some left-wing TDs have won seats despite having public order convictions relating to protesting.
“In the early years there would have been quite a few TDs who had been on the delivery end of a lethal weapon, such as Dan Breen or Frank Aiken,” says Michael Gallagher, emeritus professor in the Department of Political Science in Trinity College Dublin. “But obviously in a rather different context.”
Hutch may also take comfort from the re-election as US president of Donald Trump, who has 34 felony convictions relating to a hush money case.
“Maybe Gerry Hutch will have “I’m Voting for the Felon” T-shirts printed; it seemed to work for Trump!” speculated Gallagher.
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