... convicted of more than one offense, everything runs concurrently anyway.

Absolutely.

They, they keep them in prison for a longer period, and that's what, like through the years, when we have, like, when the new, uh, uh, uh, crime package was brought in after Roy Collins was murdered, another atrocity that was committed down in Limerick, uh, him and Shane Geoghegan, two innocent people murdered in two separate cases.

Extra laws, tougher laws were brought in with longer sanctions, um, for them.

And yeah, there are a lot of new laws that have come in this past 20 years where they say there's a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Of course, life imprisonment technically can mean seven years.

But i- the, the state and the public, I think, must be galvanized and fight back against it.

... just before I let y- y- you go, Paul, one of the other things that you said, and I, and I thought it was very interesting, you said within the piece, "We need a vigorous public information campaign to prick the consciences of the people horrified by the Waterford atrocity who will still do their line of coke at the weekend." There's a, a, a real truth in that, isn't there?

So, there could be a concerted piece of research into an individual, and then enforcement.

And, uh, y- again, it may seem ridiculous to people t- to hear this now, but at one time it was g- it was, it was illegal for the Department of Social Welfare to talk to the guards.

It was illegal for Revenue to talk to the guards.

It was also illegal for, uh, any bank to disclose information.

So, they created this multidisciplinary agency, which was pr- primarily made up of, the majority of them were guards.

And the reason you have guards, as Pat Burns said at the time, the Garda commissioner, you know, "They've got guns, and no one's gonna mess with them." And then you have social welfare inspectors, then you have customs officers, and then you have Revenue officials, and they all operate together in team rooms.

And all of this was created, again, another example of how extraordinary the story is, that, you know, this, the, the Gardaí and the authorities were working from a green field site.

Does it necessarily mean that they will face a criminal charge, or do they just face loss of assets?

Why did he come south as such in that period?

Because they were going to kill him in 1992 and they planted a bomb in the offices of the Sunday World And he just had to get out of town, just as Richard so eloquently put it there, how he was building up to this.

And it literally got very, very serious, so serious that they had to get Marty out.

And he came down here, and I had known Marty from the late 80s, but this was when I got to really know him well in the early 90s, 92, because he was in a bed and breakfast in Ratgar, I'll never forget it.

Well, I remember one time I said, we had one child at the time and I said, she'll come up and stay with me.

So he came up and stayed with my house and he was always on the phone to marry his wife.

He had three little daughters.

Paul, how should we remember Martin O'Hagan today?

Why did he come south as such in that period?

Because they were going to kill him in 1992 and they planted a bomb in the offices of the Sunday World.

And he just had to get out of town, just as Richard sort of eloquently put it there, how he was building up to this.

And it literally got very, very serious, so serious that they had to get Marty out.

And he came down here and I had known Marty from the late 80s, but this was when I got to really well, know him well in the early 90s, 92, because he was in a bed and breakfast in Ratgar, I'll never forget it.

Well, I remember one time I said, we had one child at the time and I said, she'll come up and stay with me.

So he came up and stayed with my house.

Paul, how should we remember Martin O'Hagan today?

[laughs]

... you know, they went, "Okay, stop the hormone shots.

Immediately stop the hormone shots," you know? So, uh, so you know, yeah, I was more interested in, you know, in my, my toy chest, no, but Aunt Laverne's chest, yeah, you know? So, so but anyway, I kind of screwed things up, so it's, my body clock got all messed up.

I didn't hit puberty till I was out, out of high school.

And I, you know, I took a spurt.

I was 4'6" when I graduated.

I, and then I, I spurted up to 5'2", you know? And, uh, I just, it slowed everything down.

And, and I, I, I remember it was like you, you became, during the '70s and '80s, I guess, it was like where you popped up on every single show.

Talk to us about your knowledge of

him.

Jason was very well known, uh, by the guards through the years.

Um, he has been very, like he has no criminal record.

He's always kept his nose clean.

Um, but he has been very much in the shadow of his daddy.

He's adores his father.

Why?

And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.

Now, there have been some great and remarkable moments in the history of this nation when the gospel has had a huge impact on the nation.

I think of what is known as the Great Awakening in the 18th century with, you might have heard of these characters, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield preaching to huge crowds of people.

On one occasion, it's purported that Whitfield preached to 20,000 people in the open air in Blackheath.

The movement brought hundreds of thousands of new converts into churches, changed the nation in many ways.

Last week I mentioned the Welsh revival at the turn of the 20th century.

100,000 people converted to Christ in just a few months.

I love that he's

I saw

one...

You know, I don't do this impartial bullshit when it comes to stuff like this.

Somebody put up a post somewhere on social media talking about this angel going to heaven.

This angel who's going to heaven has been involved in terrorizing people for years now, since he was about 12, right? And now he's dead in a horrific crash, the likes of which we have never seen before on our roads.

And the people piled on and said, who the fuck do you people think you are? And they're right.

Because you know what? We've got so woke and so cuddly.

And then you find yourself 15 years after that, just saying the same thing

... as, a, as a Leitrim man, as a Ballinamore man, you, you know.

Like the town that's described in That They May Face the Rising Sun, the top part of the town is Ballinamore, Cannabog, as we call it, that part of the, of our town, which is the High Street, and he talks about Hoy's Hotel.

Now Hoy's Hotel was owned by my best mate's grandmother, Gay Pryor, and she married Tom Pryor, and it, it became Pryor's in Ballinamore, one of the most famous pubs in Leitrim, I have to say.

And, um, [clears throat] it, it, Gay is running it now, and her son is starting to work in the pub as well.

That's there, and across the road was his favorite uncle.

He loved, he loved Ballinamore.

He loved the people there.

I haven't had a chance yet

Daniel Kinahan's return to Ireland, what does it mean for, well, you know, he has a trial to face, I know that, but what is the historic significance of his extradition here and the forthcoming trial? I've been

covering organised crime in Ireland for 40 years, the guts of 40 years.

I've seen all the developments, I've seen all the people becoming big guys and small guys and be going to the top and then getting caught and murdered.

Of all of those people, the single biggest, most significant figure is Daniel Kinahan, along with his father.

But his father isn't involved in this particular equation here because he is, as all the law enforcement agencies have claimed and the High Court has heard as well, is the head of the global organization known as the Kinahan Cartel.

The fact that he has been brought home is a huge development.

It is based on the back of the Regency Hotel attack, the so-called Kinnegan-Hutch feud.

He was prosecuted for something, a murder.

Earlier, I spoke to Paul Williams, special correspondent with the Irish Independent and crime author, and I began by asking just how significant the successful extradition of Daniel Kinahan actually was.

Well, it's hugely significant, and you could call it a major victory for Irish diplomacy on behalf of the Irish government and Department of Justice officials and, of course, particularly on Garda Síochána, because they were the...

the Gardaí were the people who went out and made the world sit up and take notice and pay attention to Daniel Kinahan and the so-called Kinahan organised crime group.

And so, yes, a lot of people felt, for example, that when Daniel went with his family to move to Dubai, that there was no way he could be touched again, that he was untouchable.

And that has clearly been undone now.

And of course, the writing was on the wall in 2024 when these years of diplomacy and lobbying by the Irish across the world finally paid off when the Department of Justice here signed an extradition agreement with the UAE authorities.

And very quickly after that, Sean McGovern, who was alleged to be Daniel Kennan's associate, he was acquitted.

In terms of the security operation that we saw last night, have we seen anything like that before?

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Now, look, there is a truth, a doctrine, if you will, that is so utterly unique to the Christian gospel, so fundamental to the character of the one true living God, that we simply cannot be Christian without it.

It is the doctrine of grace.

The glorious truth that God is so kind and so generous that he is willing and able to forgive us and save us, even though we are utter sinners and deserve absolutely nothing from him.

Down through the centuries and all over the world, men and women and boys and girls have been overwhelmed and transformed by amazing grace, as John Newton, the former slave trader, put it in his famous hymn.

I can remember the precise moment I understood and experienced grace for the first time.

I was 20.

do it.

Now, in Daniel Kinahan's case, is the threat from people who want to do him harm or is the threat from people who want to break him out of jail?

Well, there would be two main considerations in the security plan for bringing Kinahan home.

One is escape.

Is he going to try and organise an escape, or will his associates try and spring him, or will somebody try and assassinate him? So we analysed that down.

First of all, an escape, that would be the most elaborate operation.

It would involve a huge amount of logistics and planning and firepower.

And in fact, because you're taking on the Army Ranger Wing, and because you're taking on the Emergency Response Unit, and the only place you can affect an attempt to escape is when he's in transit in an armoured vehicle, you would need the equivalent of a military special forces unit to do so.

Are you using that in extremis? Is that metaphorical, or do they have that kind of weaponry?

Can you tell me a bit more about that and why you feel like that?

Yeah, well, I think, look, we've had 25-odd years of fighting fires.

There's been negativity around the industry.

Farmers have really felt undervalued for a very long time.

With everything that we deliver, we've just felt undervalued.

And I think we're now in a new era.

We have a new government.

I mean, it happens to be an area that I'm... comfortable with supportive of your family background i see agriculture around me every day my you know i have a son who's got to just finish his degree in agriculture family who won here with had a very good day up with the limousines up in the

Tell us more.

They're falling short of their fair share, um, mostly because they're still failing to be serious enough strategically.

It's been a couple of decades of, of burden-shifting, not only of the financing, but also of the strategy, of the thinking, of the industrial base over to the United States.

So while they're very excited at the moment about spending more money, they're actually having great difficulty producing the, the weapons systems that are necessary.

So even just, just this last month, Germany pulled out of a Dutch-German frigate program.

They were gonna build six to eight frigates necessary for the Baltic Sea.

It didn't work out.

[laughs]

... expansive rugby for so long, but-

No, but I also disagree.

I also disagree.

Sorry to interrupt, but I also disagree with that because kicking now- ... is not like kicking was before they changed the escort rule.

So before you had the escort rule, you could kick a ball up, you could just net yourselves around, and you were basically turning the ball over.

Now, I love contestable kicks 'cause they are coin flips.

It's like a, it's just flipping a coin and resetting the game 20 yards up with a disorganized defense and a sort of disorganized attack, which is great, 'cause that's why turnover ball is so effective now.

That would, that would do wonders for the Welsh game, wouldn't it?

Yeah,

there was another Kerry man, Gerard McCarty.

There was another Kerry man, Jerry Ryle, all fellows who have made their names in journalism since quite well, like Jerry Ryle is in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Australia.

Stephen Ray became the editor in chief of the entire independent group.

Now he's he's left from there now.

So, you know, anyway, so I came out and I started to start a work experience with the Law for News.

And then the Leitrim Observer, my local newspaper, called me and said, would you come and work for us? And my core supervisor at the time, Dave Rice, who's still a very dear friend of mine, in his 90s, and he's younger now, and he has greater mental clarity now than he had 50 years ago.

Do you remember where you are that day?

What happened from there?

Yeah, we were pretty happy with ourselves after those first six games.

It was...

It perhaps probably painted an inaccurate picture of the level, the true level of Asian sides.

I think we saw that probably play out over the rest of the tournament.

It was...

On some hands, deeply underwhelming from a couple of nations in particular.

Is your hope that with expanded qualifying opportunities, natural improvement will come of course it is but is there maybe on top of that more you'd like to see done be that by the AFC by FIFA or by whoever to accelerate competitiveness maybe not along the top four or five but as you say we've had nine here now maybe along the bottom couple of finishes here

Now, legally, this was clearly deemed to be potentially problematic for the jury at that time, but narratively speaking, you're of the opinion that this element simply cannot be ignored in the wider context of that day, and indeed, this case.

Well, the, the main, the, it, it adds a- another dimension to this case bec- or to this whole affair because, as I said in a piece I've written for the Irish Independent, that, you know, it incited this toxic, far-right conspiracy theory, pouting, uh, touting, uh, element in society that wasn't being taken very seriously.

Um, it gave them an opportunity to incite, basically, the, the Dublin riots on the back of this horrific incident.

Um, and that in itself, it, it, by doing so, they exposed themselves to the public in a way the public didn't appreciate before.

They, we didn't realize that maybe they would have that level of influence or could do that amount of damage.

And for the first time, the, the state was very much taken off-guard with these people.

The other part of it was that when the Dublin riots kicked off that evening, it exposed the chronic state that the g- An Garda Síochána had been allowed to, uh, decline towards, because the Gardai literally, that evening, looked like, the, the thin blue line looked particularly weak, and you had a situation where Gardai were left leaderless, rudderless, um, because there was this fear at the time that if they engaged, if they did their jobs, if they con- they confronted and tackled the rioters, that they themselves could find themselves being, um, uh, suspended from duty.

So from your perspective, given your history here, what did it tell you about the city that you've been covering crime wise for all that time, to see an explosion of that level?

Such was the impact of the brazen killing of a young journalist.

Well, it was our JFK moment.

It was the moment that the age of what we call innocence ended.

It was that, you know, it was the moment of reality.

And all of those, like, it was a new precedent.

We had never seen anything like this before.

And it also came, remember, Adrian, 19 days after the murder of Gerry McCabe, which really did shock the people of Ireland as well.

Has CAB, in your opinion, Paul, been successful in the last 30 years?

[clears throat] Tell us, uh, your memory of that day when you heard about the news of Veronica's terrible murder.

Um, I was in The Sunday World.

It was a nice sunny day.

Uh, it was just after 1:00.

Veronica was shot at exactly 12:54, and we know this because her, her murder was recorded on her message minder.

And, um, I got a call from a very close family friend of ours.

He, he was a detective, Sean O'Brien.

Uh, just remind us, uh, who ultimately went to, to prison in relation to, to her murder.

And she was

having a laugh at it, you know.

And, like, that's why all of that stuff on the 26th of June every year comes back into your mind.

Yeah.

Because, you know, in your intro, you said that her murder, her legacy, and you're absolutely right, Fran.

Her legacy is that if we didn't, if she hadn't been murdered, I would hate to see what kind of a place we'd have now.

Because this was, remember as well, put it in context.

What's it like to live like that, Paul? Cops outside the door, cops following

Gangland Ireland had reached a new level of depravity.

I ran out the door and I broke every rule on the road to get up there.

And as I was driving, the phone kept ringing in the car.

Have you heard of a Veronica? Like, it was shocking.

And I drove how I didn't end up crashing.

And I got to the scene and I got out of the car.

I shouldn't have been allowed near the car.

At 12:54 PM, Veronica made her last phone call.

According to Paul, there was a paradigm shift that took place between 1987 and 1993, and much of it was to do with an infamous Irish prison.

E1 was this landing in Portlaoise prison, maximum security prison, where the hardest and most dangerous organized criminals, ordinary criminals, were stor- were, were, were warehoused or, or, or incarcerated.

What had happened from '87 onwards was that the state had taken on the General's Gang, wiped it off the face of the earth, actually, and arrested dozens of them.

They hit several different criminal gangs.

Georgie Mitchell was in prison.

John Gilligan was in prison.

Um, Brian Meehan, who was one of his main players, was in prison.

But presumably he was using that to, to wash the money.

In all of Cook's communications with Paul, he talked obsessively about a preteen girl.

The way he was talking about this child, he was completely delusional.

"I'm in love with it," like it was a love story.

And I'm not easily shocked.

It was actually really sleazy.

He was painting the picture for me of a pedophile right in front of my eyes.

Paul contacted Gardai, and together they came up with a plan.

Basically, I decided I was going to meet him in a public place.