Taxpayers spending €4 million a year keeping Kinahan cartel gangsters behind bars

In 2019, the average cost of keeping a killer, rapist, robber or gunman behind bars was some €75,349, but that price has now gone up to at least €79,000 a year

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Taxpayers are forking out up to €4 million a year – to keep dozens of Kinahan cartel gangsters locked up in Irish prisons, it has emerged.

A Mirror investigation has established there are now at least 50 criminals linked to the Kinahan mob behind bars in our jails after a hugely successful garda take down of the gang – and it costs more than €79,000 every year to house each one of them.

“People don’t realise it costs a fortune to keep a prisoner locked up – and there has been a huge explosion in the number of inmates who are connected to the Kinahans in the last few years,” a source said last night.

“The guards have done a great job locking them all up, but that means there is also a cost associated with their detention.”

Sources have told The Mirror that the average cost of keeping an inmate behind bars – which includes everything from feeding them to ensuring staffing levels and even fitting out their cells – has increased because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2019, the average cost of keeping a killer, rapist, robber or gunman behind bars was some €75,349, but that price has now gone up to at least €79,000 a year, sources have confirmed.

They attributed the hike to extra spending caused by the pandemic, as well as a reduction in the overall number of inmates – which in turn raises the average cost per prisoner to the State.

But sources also said last night that the €79,000 figure was just an average – and some Kinahan lags are more expensive to guard.

That was a reference to approximately 10 members of the cartel led by Dubai-based mobster Daniel Kinahan who are now locked up in the top security Portlaoise Prison in Co Laois.

The average cost for keeping a prisoner there is at least €97,000 – because of the higher security there and the smaller prisoner headcount.

“Portlaoise has always been more expensive than the rest of the prison estate,” a source said.

Key members of the cartel locked up in Portlaoise Prison’s A Block include Freddie Thompson, 41.

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The former close ally of Kinahan is serving a life sentence handed down in 2018 after he was convicted of the July 2016 murder in central Dublin of former republican prisoner Daithi Douglas.

Mr Douglas, 55, was shot dead at his wife’s shop in south central Dublin as part of the Kinahan Hutch feud, a war that has now left 18 men dead. Just last month, Thompson’s sidekick Lee Canavan, 31, was caged for life for the same murder.

Mr Douglas was targeted because the cartel wrongly suspected him of involvement in a botched November 2015 hit in west Dublin on Daniel Kinahan himself.

Another man serving life in Portlaoise is Eamonn Cumberton, 33, jailed over the April 2016 murder of Mickey Barr in the Sunset House pub in north inner city Dublin.

Most of the other Kinahan inmates are locked up in the C and D wings of Dublin’s Mountjoy jail.
Jonathan Keogh, 34, and pal Thomas Fox, 34, are in Mountjoy – for the May 2016 murder of Gareth Hutch in the city centre.

Brothers Gary, 35, and Glenn, 25, Thompson are both serving 12 years and six months for their part in a plot to murder Patsy Hutch – a brother of top Kinahan target Gerry “The Monk” Hutch.

Another key man behind bars there is Declan Brady, 55, who is serving a 10-year sentence for firearms offences. He was a major player in Kinahan’s drugs importation gang and had such a low profile that gardai nicknamed him Mr Nobody.

In 2019, he pleaded guilty to possessing nine revolvers, four semi-automatic pistols, a sub-machine gun, an assault rifle and 1,355 rounds of ammunition in suspicious circumstances at Unit 52, Block 503, Grants Drive, Greenogue Business Park, Rathcoole, Co Dublin in January 2017. The guns were part of the Kinahan’s plans to wipe out the rival Hutch mob. He was also recently convicted of money laundering offences.

Liam Branigan, 38, is serving eight years over a plot to kill target Hutch associate Gary Hanley in central Dublin in November 2017.

But others are in for smaller jail terms, including Dubliner Martin Aylmer, 33, who was jailed for four years and six months for helping the Kinahans murder republican Mickey Barr.

And Jonathan Keogh’s sister Regina, 42, is locked up in Dublin’s Dochas female prison after she was also convicted of the murder of Gareth Hutch.

Several Kinahan allies are also in jails in Britain and Spain – but they are the problem of foreign taxpayers.