Posted by Updated / Saturday, 14 Feb 2026 10:13
Crime Correspondent
Gerard Hutch, the man known as ‘The Monk’, announced this week that following his near success in Dublin Central in November 2024, he’s standing again for election, this time in a by-election in the same constituency.
Our Crime Correspondent Paul Reynolds examines the life and times of Gerard Hutch and the findings of the Special Criminal Court that he was: in control of the guns used to murder David Byrne at the Regency Hotel ten years ago; and the leader of the Hutch organised crime group.
The candidate
“I am standing for the people in the community and I don’t count me birds until me eggs hatch,” Gerard Hutch declared as he announced his candidacy in the forthcoming Dublin Central by-election, while also claiming “I don’t make promises I can’t deliver on”.
However, unlike the other candidates, Gerard Hutch did not make himself available to the media for much scrutiny during his last campaign, preferring instead to post online short videos of himself in funny situations, chatting and laughing with supporters or making broad unchallenged statements.
He engaged in only three selected prearranged interviews where he was encouraged to talk about his childhood in poverty and his view of life and the world.
He was not questioned in any detail about ‘the elephant in the room’ – his links to organised crime.
The 62-year-old gets visibly agitated if asked anything about the Special Criminal Court judgement in the case where he was found not guilty of the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in February 2016.
Gerard Hutch’s ‘go-to’ insult to reporters, who seek to question him about the findings in the court’s judgement that he was in control of the guns used to murder the Kinahan gang member that day, is to call them “dying wasps”.
There is still plenty of sting in Hutch’s tail as the latest recipient of this scorn, Paul Healy of the Irish Daily Star, learned last Thursday night at a publicity event in Dublin for a play by Rex Ryan, to which Hutch was invited.
“I’ve no interest, I’m not going to answer you,” Hutch told Mr Healy, “if you ask me I’m just going to shut up.”
Mr Healy persisted with his questions to Gerard Hutch about organised crime amid protests from Mr Ryan and the public relations personnel insisting “we are here to talk about the play”.
Some might say it was a case of Hamlet without the prince.
‘The last sting of the dying wasp’
It’s not clear if Gerard Hutch knows the origin of the phrase “the last sting of the dying wasp” but it’s ironic that a phrase made popular by a criminal and now emblazoned on T-shirts on sale on Moore Street in Dublin, first came to prominence over 21 years ago, when it was used by a former minister for justice.
The now Senator Michael McDowell said it at a garda graduation in Templemore in November 2004 when he confidently but erroneously predicted the demise of organised crime in Ireland.
The reality is that at that time, the Kinahan organised crime group, ably assisted by Hutch family members who were also in the gang, were building their criminal empire into the transnational organisation it is today.
Following Mr McDowell’s bold statement, the gang which at the time comprised Hutch and Kinahan family members along with their associates and affiliates, went on to murder their rivals Martin ‘Marlo’ Hyland, John Daly and Eamonn Dunne and anyone else who got in their way, before taking control of the drugs trade in Ireland.
The gang was actively involved in the feuds between 2000 and 2010 which cost 14 lives in Limerick and 16 in Crumlin.
In the ten years after Mr McDowell’s statement, between 2006 and 2015, 145 people were killed in Ireland in gangland murders, and the killing had also migrated abroad, most notably to Spain.
It was a murder on the Costa del Sol – the murder of Gary Hutch in September 2015 – that resulted in the implosion of the co-operative criminal enterprise between members of both families and their associates.
That assassination split that gang into two factions, the Kinahan organised crime group and the Hutch organised crime group, and started a feud that cost 18 lives which is still going on today.
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