By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Gerard Hutch, named in a court case last year as head of a well-known crime family in Ireland, is seeking election to parliament, shaking up a race in inner-city Dublin that includes a former finance minister and the opposition leader.
Officials confirmed last week that Hutch, better known as “The Monk”, was on the ballot for the Nov. 29 vote. Hutch said on Tuesday that he was running because he did not think the community where he grew up was properly represented.
“We have TDs (members of parliament) at the moment but we have no representatives, that’s what I’m hearing in the street from the people and they’ve asked me would I go,” Hutch told the Sunday World newspaper’s Crime World podcast.
The U.S. State Department said in 2022 that the Hutch drug trafficking gang was locked in a turf war with the Kinehan crime group, also based in Dublin, that resulted in 18 murders in the aftermath of a 2016 killing at a Dublin hotel.
The Hutch gang was named by the State Department when it offered a $5 million reward for help in arresting leaders of the Kinehan gang suspected of drug trafficking.
Gerard Hutch was identified as head of the Hutch family by an Irish court last year when he was acquitted of involvement in the 2016 murder. The court said the Hutch gang members had organised the attack by a six-man hit team at a daytime boxing weigh-in that “sparked mayhem on the streets of Dublin”.
Hutch said on the podcast that he had a number of convictions for robbery as a younger man. He has not been convicted of any other crime more recently and in a rare 2008 interview with national broadcaster RTE, he denied being the leader of a crime gang.
A former Sinn Fein local councillor and accomplice in the hotel attack, Jonathan Dowdall, turned state witness against Hutch and gave evidence alleging he was behind the attack. But the court ruled Dowdall was not a reliable witness.
13 CANDIDATES FOR INNER-CITY DUBLIN SEAT
Thirteen candidates are competing for four seats in the Dublin Central constituency, including Public Expenditure Minister and Eurogroup president Pascal Donohoe of the governing centre-right Fine Gael party, and Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the left-wing opposition Sinn Fein.
Almost uniquely in Europe, Ireland has no strong populist parties and while there are more far-right independent and fringe party candidates this time, Fine Gael and like-minded coalition partner Fianna Fail are favourites to win re-election.
Hutch arrived last Thursday on a moped to register for the election and waved his papers to waiting journalists. He was photographed by the Irish Mirror newspaper hanging a poster on a lamppost with the slogan: “We need change and I’m your man.”
Rival Garry Gannon, a local lawmaker for the Social Democrat Party, questioned Hutch’s commitment to the inner city.
“If Gerry Hutch wants to be a political leader, ask him where he was for the last any number of years,” said Gannon, referring to time spent by Hutch on the Spanish island of Lanzarote and in the wealthy Dublin suburb of Clontarf.
“This community has trauma that is generational. It won’t be sorted by people standing up and pretending to be some sort of saviour,” Gannon said.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries; editing by Mark Heinrich)
