A young man is under protection in the Cloverhill remand prison, in Dublin, after rumours he was one of the killers of English toddler Jamie Bulger.
The rumours have been dismissed as without foundation by Garda and Government sources.
The man was arrested and charged with a serious assault in a rural town last November, and has been held on remand since. He will appear in court again later this month.
Since his arrest, rumours have circulated in the town that he was Robert Thompson, one of the two then 10-year-old boys who abducted Jamie Bulger from a Liverpool shopping centre in 1993 and then killed him. Thompson and the other accused, Jon Venables, were recently released and given new identities for their own protection. It is not known where they live.
According to sources in the rural town, the man now in Cloverhill is originally from the England. Prior to the assault with which he is charged, he had told people he had been in trouble in England and had been issued with a new identity when he moved to Ireland. This led to the circulation of the rumours about his identity.
These have been investigated by An Garda Síochána, the Prison Service and the Department of Justice, and are considered by them to be without foundation. However, if such rumours spread in the prison, the man's safety could be at risk.
He has also been charged with a serious assault on a woman. For both reasons, the prison authorities have placed him in a protected cell.
The abduction and murder of Jamie Bulger aroused intense revulsion in Britain and further afield, and provoked widespread debate about how two 10-year-olds could have committed such a horrific crime.
They were tried in an adult court, and sentenced to be detained "At Her Majesty's Pleasure" with a recommendation that they serve not less than eight years. This was later increased to 10 by the Lord Chief Justice.
Following intensive lobbying by the mother of Jamie Bulger, the then Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, increased this to 15 years. This decision was quashed by the House of Lords.
Thompson and Venables contested aspects of their trial in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that politicians should not interfere in the judicial process and increase sentences.
They were released after serving the 10 years and were provided with new identities. The UK courts have banned the media from identifying them.