One week after launching his byelection campaign at a play by Rex Ryan about his life, veteran criminal Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch has issued a video urging people to vote.
In a recorded message, he claimed the Government did not want people to register to vote but “wanted to keep you ignorant” instead.
“Get the habit of registering, go on, I’ll look forward to you,” he said.
Hutch intends to run the upcoming byelection in the Dublin Central constituency. He was close to winning the final seat in the constituency in the general election in 2024, but was beaten by Labour’s Marie Sherlock.
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A byelection is set to take place in May to fill the seat vacated by former Fine Gael finance minister Paschal Donohoe, who has left politics for a senior post at the World Bank based in Washington.
“Hello folks, the election is coming up soon. You matter, make sure you register to vote,” said Hutch in a piece to camera published on his X account. “I’ve been through an election already and a lot of people weren’t registered to vote.”
He claimed he was “talking to other politicians in the area when I was running” and they asked him what vote he believed he would get, to which he replied: “The people in the community.”
Hutch claimed the unnamed politicians told him the people he was hoping would vote for him were not registered to vote.
“And I said they probably don’t vote because there’s no one to vote for. So I said, ‘let’s see what happens’ and I got over 3,000 votes.”
Hutch got just over 2,000 first preference votes in the Dublin Central constituency in the general election, with the bulk of his support coming from the north inner city. However, he failed to secure enough transfers and was overtaken by Sherlock.
He said in his video, published late on Tuesday night, that his campaign launch in 2024 left it “a bit late for people to register” to vote but there was now “plenty of time”.
He urged younger people to help their older relatives to register if they were not comfortable online. He called on people to “just register, you don’t have to vote for me”.
The courts have described Hutch as the figurehead of the Hutch crime gang and the head of the Hutch family. He has been described in Garda evidence to the High Court as the main protagonist, on the Hutch side, in the Kinahan-Hutch feud.
He was one of the first targets of the Criminal Assets Bureau in the 1990s and eventually settled, for unpaid taxes on criminal income, for more than £1 million. He is currently being pursued again by Cab for almost €800,000 and is a suspect for the two biggest cash robberies in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s.
The 62-year-old father of five, who has for years lived mostly in Lanzarote, is under investigation in Spain where he is suspected of being the leader of an international money laundering group. He is also under investigation for allegedly inducing the release of confidential information from inside the Garda.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste Simon Harris has said he believes measures to preclude anyone with a criminal history from becoming a member of the Dáil merit consideration.
“I don’t intend to use this interview to make a martyr out of Gerry Hutch,” he told Newstalk’s Claire Byrne show on Wednesday.
“The people of Dublin Central rejected him in the last general election. I don’t believe he’s going to win the by-election and I think the people of Dublin Central will give him his answer again.”
The Fine Gael leader said he did not want to blame the media, but he did worry that Hutch was “almost treated like some sort of celebrity”.
“He’s not a celebrity. He’s someone being actively pursued by the Criminal Assets Bureau. CAB don’t come after you for the craic. They come after you for very serious reasons,” he added.
“Therefore, I just think some of this coverage of Gerry Hutch, which I don’t wish to add to, by making him a martyr, giving him attention, giving him free publicity, that’s what actually concerns me.
“This guy’s not some sort of cute and cuddly celebrity.”
Harris said he would not be attending the play about Hutch, but he supported artists and people in the creative space “to do what they wish to”.
