Reputed head of crime family campaigns for seat in Irish parliament

20/11/2024 6:23

        Gerard Hutch, named in a court case last year as head of a well-known crime family in Ireland, is seeking election to parliament, shaking up a race in
        inner-city Dublin that includes a former finance minister and the opposition leader.
        
        Officials confirmed last week that Hutch, better known as "The Monk", was on the ballot for the Nov. 29 vote. Hutch said on Tuesday that he was running because he did not think the community where he grew up was properly represented.
        
        "We have TDs (members of parliament) at the moment but we have no representatives, that's what I'm hearing in the street from the people and they've asked me would I go," Hutch told the Sunday World newspaper's Crime World podcast.
        
        The U.S. State Department said in 2022 that the Hutch drug trafficking gang was locked in a turf war with the Kinehan crime group, also based in Dublin, that resulted in 18 murders in the aftermath of a 2016 killing at a Dublin hotel.