By admin 
A few weeks ago, when he was thinking about a run for the Dáil, Dublin gangland figure Gerard Hutch asked his friend Paddy Corcoran if he had a chance.
“Ireland’s biggest criminals are already there,” Corcoran recalled saying to Hutch before referring to it the €335,000 the government spent on a cycle shed for Leinster House.
It’s not an isolated vision, and there is some support for Hutch in the north inner city where he grew up and where many members of his family still live. A recent Sunday newspaper poll showed that Hutch could get 8 percent of the vote in the election Dublin Central constituency – not enough to win a seat, but enough to put pressure on some other anti-establishment candidates.
Corcoran, chairman of the Corinthians Boxing Club in Summerhill in the city centre, said people in the area would not be deterred by Hutch’s criminal past. “He takes care of the people in the north inner city who need help. He never looks for praise or anything.”
Hutch, 61, known as The Monk for his reputation for austerity and quiet living, returned to Dublin on Monday morning with the intention of standing as an independent candidate. He has until Friday to submit his papers. An election official said it will be next Thursday before they can confirm who is registered as a candidate.
During Hutch’s decades-long criminal career, the state made many attempts to put him behind bars. Hutch usually came out on top.
He got his start in organized crime as part of an inner-city gang led by notorious drug dealer Eamon Kelly before going on to commit some of the biggest robberies in the state’s history.
These included the £3 million armed robbery of the Brinks Allied depot in 1995 and the £1.3 million Marino Mart robbery in 1987.
Vast resources were spent on capturing Hutch, but his meticulous planning always kept him one step ahead of gardaí.
By the late 1990s, Hutch had seemingly retired from crime and began investing his money in real estate. Over the next few years he amassed millions in assets in Ireland and abroad.
A £2 million settlement with the Office for Criminal Assets in 2000 due to unpaid taxes did little to deter him.
Hutch was thrust onto the front lines of crime again in 2015 as he tried to defuse a simmering feud between his family members and the police. Kinahan organized crime gang.
This failed and when his cousin Gary Hutch was murdered by the Kinahans, Hutch is said to have orchestrated the attack on the Regency Hotel in 2016 to eliminate Daniel Kinahan. Kinahan escaped, but his friend David Byrne was killed.
He was eventually tried for the attack last year after being extradited from Spain. His prosecution at the Special Criminal Court was based mainly on the former’s evidence Sinn Fein councilor and once trusted Hutch associate Jonathan Dowdall.
The court found Hutch not guilty of murder after ruling that Dowdall was not a reliable witness. However, it stated that it believed he had control over the assault rifles used in the attack, crimes he was never charged with. Hutch was free to return to Spain and continue his real estate empire.
Last month he started saying he was planning to have one general elections walk. The following week he was arrested in Spain as part of a major money laundering investigation. Hutch’s home in Clontarf was also searched and he was taken into custody at Tachiche Prison in Lanzarote.
He appealed the decision to deny him bail, arguing that he had a right to return to Ireland to participate in the democratic process. To the surprise of many observers, prosecutors agreed with him and the court ordered his release on €100,000 bail.
In making its decision, the court relied on EU case law, which states that political candidates who are prosecuted but not yet convicted should be allowed to stand for elections.
For Corcoran, the timing of his arrest raises some questions. “Why did they arrest him just when he decided to run for government?” he asks. “It’s plain and simple, isn’t it?”
There is no evidence of a conspiracy to prevent Hutch from running for office. The money laundering investigation has been ongoing for at least two years and is being led by Spanish police, not Irish authorities.
Another belief, shared by some gardaí, is that Hutch knew he would be arrested and decided to stand as a candidate to ensure he was granted bail. It wouldn’t be the first time he received a tip that he would be arrested. However, there is also little evidence to support this.
It’s also possible that Hutch has a genuine desire to serve his community. He has a long history of investment in the area, including purchasing the Corinthians boxing gym in 1998 and leasing it to the club for €1 per year.
There is speculation that he will use the club as his campaign headquarters, although Corcoran says he has not heard anything about that. ‘Gerry does his own thing.’
In the unlikely event that Hutch is elected, he will be far from the first criminal to sit in the Dáil seat. Still in 2020, independent TD Michael Lowry comfortably topped the poll in Co Tipperary, two years after being found guilty of a tax offence.
A number of Sinn Féin TDs have been elected despite convictions linked to the Troubles, while some left-wing TDs have won seats despite public order convictions linked to protesting.
“In the early years, there would have been quite a few TDs who were on the side of a deadly weapon, such as Then Breen or Frank Aiken” says Michael Gallagher, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. “But of course in a completely different context.”
Hutch can also take comfort in being re-elected as US president Donald Trumpwho has 34 felony convictions related to a hush money case.
“Maybe Gerry Hutch will have T-shirts printed that say ‘I vote for the criminal’; it seemed to work for Trump!” speculated Gallagher.