The Kinihans, Sinn Féin, Uzi firearms: What Dowdall and Hutch discussed on road trip
A prison van under Garda escort arrives at the Special Criminal Court where the trial of Gerry Hutch is continuing. Picture: Collins Courts
As Gerard ‘The Monk’ Hutch is getting out of Jonathan Dowdall’s Toyota Land Cruiser after a long day of driving, the former Sinn Féin councillor says to him: “Do me a favour when you get home, give us a text.”
Hutch assures him he will.
And with that, it brought an end to over seven hours of audio played in court of the conversations the pair had on that day, March 7, 2016, a month after David Byrne was murdered in the Regency Hotel.
The Special Criminal Court has not even ruled yet on whether this evidence will be admissible, with the defence set to fight it, its argument expected to centre on the hours of audio that come while Dowdall and Hutch were in the North.
And again, we heard that there was a lack of awareness of the extent to which they were being tracked by gardaí at this time. This time it was from The Monk, himself.
“I'd be hiding from the cops,” he told Dowdall. “They were at the airport outside the plane waiting on me. That’s it, they haven’t seen me since. They seen me at the funeral. They didn’t see me anywhere else.”
In any case, the gardaí had a bug and tracker on Mr Dowdall’s Land Cruiser, and dozens of surveillance gardaí had been following their movements. On the last of three days of audio from those conversations, after they had already been in the car together for hours and hours, it was more shooting the breeze from the pair heard in court as the tapes concluded.
The audio on Thursday began over an hour after Dowdall and Hutch had left a meeting with senior republicans and were on their way back to Dublin. As the court heard, they discussed the Kinahans, they talked Sinn Féin, the apparent unreliability of Uzi firearms and even the 1988 case of three IRA members being killed in Gibraltar.
In what seemed a rare occurrence, it is Hutch who at one stage breaks a silence to ponder if the republicans, who they had met to try to assist brokering a deal with the Kinahans, “were playing both sides”. On the recording, this suggestion seems to perturb Dowdall.
“They wouldn’t do it to you,” he said. “They’d fuck too many people over if they did that.” Even after the subject is changed, Dowdall later returns to it. “No, Gerard, get that out of your head,” he told Hutch. “They wouldn’t do that, not a fucking chance they’d do that.”
Irish history was also up for discussion, as Dowdall delved into what the “provos” think of Michael Collins. “Ask a provo what you think of Michael Collins, he’ll say he’s a traitor,” he said. He later said that Sinn Féin “only want to get into fucking government now”.
Dowdall also asks Hutch how the Kinahans became so powerful, and the Monk’s reply references how Daniel “was wide enough” and that they initially made a few quid but “started to make big money there about two years ago”.
And, according to Hutch, it’s “not just the money, it’s the bleeding power as well”. The Monk said he isn’t after the “hundreds of millions” like the Kinahans, however, and replies “yeah” to Mr Dowdall’s assertion he’d just like a few quid “under the radar”.
There’s even a musing on the apparent situation they’re currently in.
“It’s hard to talk to normal people when you’ve all that stuff going on,” Dowdall told Hutch, referencing how people give out about “stupid things” and they should “cop on”. Hutch replies: “That could be the biggest thing going on in their lives.”
In the afternoon, it turned to legal argument.
Brendan Grehan SC, for Hutch, told the court he wanted to give a “thumbnail sketch” of what his argument would be as he proceeded to go into detail about their concerns, with the fact much of the audio comes from time spent in the North at the core.
“In our submission, the State was acting illegally once it harvested material in breach of its own act and the protections in it,” Mr Grehan said. “The State cannot be allowed to benefit from its own illegality and the fruits of that harvest should be excluded from the trial.”
Prosecuting counsel Sean Gillane, while not actually outlining what his argument will be on this just yet, did signify he felt Grehan “is wrong”. “We’ll hear that in due course,” he said.
So, while not referred to by name at the close of proceedings, the next “significant” witness in this case will be Jonathan Dowdall himself. The court will only hear from him after the legal argument on the listening device on the car.
“We do need a ruling before we move forward,” Ms Justice Tara Burns said.
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