YOUNG AND FREE | 

Mobster Barry Young enjoys brief taste of Christmas freedom in Dublin

The prison officers were taking no chances with Young, who was handcuffed and chained during the visit.

Yesterday at 16:54

CRIME boss Barry Young enjoyed a very brief taste of Christmas on the streets of Dublin city as he attended a medical appointment this week.

Young (38) has been spending his days and nights in Portlaoise Prison, where he shares a jail wing with some of the country’s most feared gangland criminals.

The Sligo criminal is currently housed on the C3 landing of the high-security jail where he is serving an 11-year sentence, handed down in July for directing a criminal gang.

However, Young got a small sense of the freedom on Thursday when he was escorted from Portlaoise to a medical appointment in Dublin.

As Dubliners rushed to finish their Christmas shopping on one of the busiest days of the year, the feared mob boss momentarily had a glimpse of the festive fun.

But as these exclusive images show, the prison officers were taking no chances with Young, who was handcuffed and chained during the visit.

A source said he was back in the Co. Laois jail in time for his tea.

Young has previously been described as keeping his head down behind bars. However, he was caught with a phone in October following a search operation carried out by the prison service.

He was one of a number of senior organised criminals caught with phones during raids on the prison’s C3 landing.

Kinahan Cartel gang member Patrick Curtis was also caught with a contraband device during the same raids.

Curtis is serving a 10-year sentence for his role in the plot to murder Patrick ‘Patsy’ Hutch. He led a sub-cell plot to kill Hutch and had compromised an encrypted phone by photographing the messages on it.

During his two decade-long criminal career, Young became one of the country’s most significant drug dealers and controlled a gang operating in the west of Ireland and beyond.

He forged close links to a number of infamous Dublin criminals, including Mark ‘the Guinea Pig’ Desmond and a major drugs trafficker known as ‘Mr Big’.

Young also became a key figure in the drugs trade in the North and was suspected of supplying cocaine and cannabis to a number of gangs operating in Belfast and in the border regions.

It was these links to criminals in the North, according to sources, that lead to Young being sucked into a plot to target gangster Robbie Lawlor.

Young is believed to have owed Mr Big’s mob a significant amount of money — and was “forced to” enlist his own criminal associates in the North to become involved in a plot to kill Lawlor.

Lawlor, who was suspected of murdering teen Keane Mulready Woods, was gunned down in Belfast in April 2020.

Mr Big’s drugs gang is considered the biggest crime organisation on the northside of Dublin and has also been involved in tiger kidnappings.

It is suspected of organising the brutal gun murders of Real IRA brothers Alan and Vinnie Ryan in 2012 and 2016 as part of extortion-related disputes.

During his sentencing hearing, the Special Criminal Court heard how Young directed a drug dealing gang with 20 members that sold massive amounts of cannabis all over the west of Ireland.

Gardaí detailed how Young used Dublin criminals to threaten and intimidate anyone who failed to pay their drug debts.

The court was told how he used ‘household names’ to enforce debts but that he preferred to sort things out through negotiations.

In recent years, Young spent a large amount of his time in Spain, where he is believed to have purchased a number of properties and invested in businesses.

However, his crime career came to a swift end when gardaí seized phones from him and found up to 16,000 messages which had been sent while he was based in Spain and running his rural drugs gang from there.

They included ‘damage limitation exercises’ after gardaí intercepted one of his couriers in the west of Ireland and messages directing another to pick up drugs and cash for collection and delivery.

During Young’s sentencing hearing, Garda Detective Inspector Ray Mulderrig said the investigation of the phone messages revealed how Young headed the gang which was divided into cells, each with their own leadership.

He said Young’s outfit was one of four gangs operating in Sligo who answered to a layer of criminals above them based in Dublin.

They co-operated with each other and could call on outside contacts for services such as enforcing debts.

Evidence was heard how Young had no trappings of wealth, was driven around in nondescript cars and had been looking for a way out of drug dealing.

His defence counsel handed in letters from Young and said that since 2018 Young had been trying to get away from the situation he was in and had considered “ending it all.”

He said the day he was arrested in January 2022 was “a happy day” and he thanked the arresting officers.