Dundon not sorry for Collins family

HIGH-PROFILE Limerick criminal Wayne Dundon has said he is not sorry for what the family of murdered businessman Roy Collins are going through.

Dundon is linked to the notorious McCarthy-Dundon gang, who are suspected of the murder for which James Dillon was jailed for life last week.

In an bizarre interview, Dundon told the Limerick Chronicle: “Why should I be sorry? It’s nothing to do with me. He’s going through a hard time. Everybody who loses a family member does, but can he not leave me and my family alone? Do I have to pay for other people’s sins? I’m very worried about the way the guards are carrying on with the Steve Collins (Roy Collins father) affair, about what’s being said. It’s all innuendo, there’s no facts. I’d like Mr Collins and his vendetta against me and my family to be left alone. Let justice take it’s course. Why can’t every Joe Soap in the whole of this town get the coverage he’s getting?”

The interview was given to Alan English, editor of the Limerick Leader and Limerick Chronicle, after Dundon went to the newspaper’s office on Monday to complain about their coverage of his daughter’s extravagant First Holy Communion on Saturday when she was paraded through the city centre in a Cinderella bubble cart drawn by two white horses.

Mr English’s byline appeared on an inside, two-page spread in the Limerick Chronicle yesterday. The front page carried the splash headline “Dundon Hits Out”, with strap headlines which read “Crime boss says he’s afraid to leave his house in case Steve Collins sees me and says I threatened him”.

Another strap headline read: “Angered by media coverage of Cinderella-style carriage at his daughter’s Communion.”

The main headline inside read: “Why should I be sorry for Steve Collins? says Dundon.”

Mr English wrote of the interview conducted in the paper’s public office: “As he talks about Steve Collins, Dundon tenses up. He curses, then apologises for the bad language. He projects a menacing physical presence, but throughout the interview he is mostly calm. His wife comes to collect him, but he sends her away: he has more to say.”

Dundon was jailed for seven years for threatening to kill Ryan Lee, a cousin of Roy Collins, at Brannigans Bar in December 2004. After Mr Lee refused entry to Dundon’s 14-year-old sister, he drove up, cupped his hands as if pointing a gun and told the barman: “F**k you, you are dead.”

Shortly after, a gunman wearing a motorbike helmet walked into the bar and shot Ryan Lee. Nobody was charged with shooting Ryan Lee. Dundon was jailed on evidence given by Ryan Lee.

Gardaí believe the Roy Collins murder was carried out in revenge for the jailing of Dundon.

Dundon told Mr English: “I spent five and a half years in prison for something I didn’t do.”

He went to the Limerick Leader claiming he got upset on learning that his daughter’s teacher produced a copy of Monday’s edition in class and showed it to her.

What is written about him was “water off a duck’s back”, but this has “hit a nerve”.

Dundon told the newspaper’s editor: “The papers in Dublin write whatever they want about me and my family. We don’t care about the tabloid papers, but I don’t like seeing stuff like this in my local paper. Leave my daughter out of it. Keep it to me.”