Eamon Ó Cuív’s visits to republican prisoners, including Jonathan Dowdall, “come from a good place”, Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys has said.
She defended her Government colleague on Wednesday, saying that he did not realise Dowdall had been involved in the Regency Hotel murder when he met him.
As revealed in the Irish Mirror, Mr Ó Cuív, 72, visited Dowdall in the final weeks of his eight-year sentence for falsely detaining a businessman and waterboarding him in his house.
This occurred just months before gardai charged him over his involvement in the Regency Hotel murder of David Byrne. He was sentenced to four years in prison earlier this month.
Mr Ó Cuív accepted that he did visit Dowdall in 2020 but said he would not have visited him if he had known of his links to the Regency Hotel attack.
Asked about the controversy, Minister Humphreys defended Mr Ó Cuív, saying that his visits to prisons “come from a good place”.
“I do know that Eamon Ó Cuív does visit Republican prisoners,” she said.
“It is something he has been doing for many, many years. Indeed, I've spoken to him about it in the past.
“He does this to help to rehabilitate, to try to understand.
“I think it does, certainly, come from a very good place in terms of what Eamon was trying to do.
“He has said very clearly that he didn't realise that this particular prisoner was involved in criminality.”
A spokesperson for Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on Tuesday that he was now aware of the Fianna Fáil leader speaking to Mr Ó Cuív about the issue.
A spokesperson for Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that Dowdall would not be “the sort of individual that a member of Fine Gael would normally be in the practice of visiting”.
Fine Gael politicians have been privately fuming about Mr Ó Cuív’s meeting, with one telling the Irish Mirror that it was an “absolute f***ing disgrace”.
Mr Ó Cuiv maintains that he was not aware of Dowdall’s link to gangland and he would not have met with him if he had known.
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