Limerick hurler Kyle Hayes to wait longer for decision on sentencing for nightclub violence

Judge Dara Hayes remanded the Limerick hurler to appear before Limerick Circuit Criminal Court at 10.30am, this coming Friday

Kyle Hayes broke his suspended sentence terms when he was convicted last September of a dangerous driving in Cork in July 2024. File picture: Chani Anderson

Five-time All-Star Limerick hurler, Kyle Hayes, will have to wait longer to find out if he will be jailed for his conviction for engaging in violence at a Limerick nightclub in 2019.

In March 2024, following Hayes’s trial at Limerick Circuit Court the previous December, concurrent suspended sentences of two years and 18 months were imposed on him, after a jury convicted him of two counts of committing violent disorder, in which carpenter, Cillian McCarthy, sustained serious facial injuries.

Hayes was acquitted by the jury of a charge of assaulting Mr McCarthy causing harm, at the Icon nightclub, Limerick City, but the sentencing Judge Dermot Sheehan said it would not have happened “if not for Kyle Hayes”.

A condition of Hayes’s suspended sentences were that he be of good behaviour and not commit any other offences for two years from last March.

Hayes broke these terms when he was convicted last September of a dangerous driving in Cork in July 2024, for which he received a fine of €250 and a two-year driving ban at Mallow District Court.

Hayes, aged 26, of Ballyashea, Kildimo, Co Limerick, lost his appeal against the dangerous driving conviction at the Court of Appeal in Cork last week.

This triggered a “Section 99” order at Limerick Circuit Court on Wednesday morning, whereby the court was to decide whether or not to activate all or part or none of the suspended sentences imposed on Hayes for violent disorder.

Hayes had denied the violent disorder charges at his trial in 2023.

On Wednesday, Judge Dara Hayes said he would have to take time to consider the matter before deciding whether or not to activate all, part of, or none of Hayes’s two-year suspended sentence.

Judge Hayes remanded Hayes to appear before Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, for a decision on the matter at 10.30am, this coming Friday.