'There’s no plastic surgery': Reality of witness protection 'a lot more basic than Hollywood'

Going State witness is not like Hollywood, nor is it backed up by law, writes Security Correspondent Cormac O'Keeffe.

Former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall is turning State witness against Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch and others. File picture.

Hollywood movies and Netflix series are the reference point for many people when they hear the words “witness protection”.

Images of criminals-turned-witnesses and their families wrapped in an all-protective, top-secret system, and whisked away to a new life in a detached bungalow in the leafy suburbs may come to mind.