The alleged kingpin of a crime family is standing in an election to the Irish parliament.
Gerry Hutch, 63, described in court by an Irish judge as the patriarchal figurehead of the Hutch criminal organisation, is challenging candidates of the mainstream parties in the by-election for the Dublin Central seat in Friday’s vote.
Nicknamed "The Monk", he is running as an independent on a populist platform mixing local issues such as housing and support for children with special educational needs, along with an anti-immigration message.
The Hutch drug-trafficking gang was named by the US State Department in 2022 as being locked in a turf war with the Kinahan crime group, also based in Dublin, which resulted in 18 murders in six years.
Daniel Kinahan, 48, was arrested in Dubai last month when police executed an international arrest warrant issued by the Irish authorities, who are now seeking his extradition.
Mr Hutch finished in fifth place in the four-seat constituency at the 2024 national election but is standing again after the seat was vacated by Paschal Donohoe, a former finance minister who joined the World Bank.
In another by-election, in Galway West, candidates are jostling to take the seat once held by Labour’s Catherine Connolly, who was elected President last year. The west of Ireland constituency is also a microcosm of broader frustration that escalated last month in the form of protests against rising fuel costs.
An Ipsos B & A and Irish Times poll ranked Mr Hutch third, with 14 per cent of first preference votes, behind Sinn Fein’s Janice Boylan on 21 per cent and Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats on 18 per cent. His best chance of winning is to pick up the second preference votes of eliminated candidates.
Speaking at the start of the campaign, Mr Hutch told The Irish Times that “it's great to put someone in there with a chequered past".
"That's what we need in the Dail [parliament], you need change. You need a man like me in there who can talk to the guy in the street,” he said.
Mr Hutch has used social media, particularly TikTok to criticise unaffordable housing, the rising cost of living, and emigration of doctors, nurses and tradespeople for jobs abroad.
Portraying an unvarnished image, he has also set out a series of eye-catching proposals such as no tax for under-25s to lure skilled workers back to Ireland and free travel for nurses, shop workers and delivery drivers.
“Families have been broken apart because of Government failures. Young people and workers are being forced to leave Ireland just to survive and earn a decent living. That is not right," he said in one post.
But his rival Garry Gannon, a local for the Social Democrat Party, questioned Mr Hutch's commitment to the inner city.
Referring to time spent by Mr Hutch on the Spanish island of Lanzarote and in the wealthy Dublin suburb of Clontarf, he said: “If Gerry Hutch wants to be a political leader, ask him where he was for the last any number of years.”
The Hutch gang was named by the State Department when it offered a $5 million reward for help in arresting leaders of the Kinahan gang, who are accused of trafficking drugs.
The Irish court said the Hutch gang members had organised the attack by a six-man hit team at a daytime boxing weigh-in that “sparked mayhem on the streets of Dublin”.
Mr Hutch has said on a podcast that he had a number of convictions for robbery as a younger man.
He has not been convicted of any other crime and, in a rare 2008 interview with national broadcaster RTE, denied being the leader of a crime gang.
Legal challenges and security issues mean Mr Kinahan is unlikely to be sent back to his home country quickly to face accusations he ran a multibillion-dollar drug operation.
