Five-time All-Star Limerick hurler Kyle Hayes will have to wait until Friday to hear if he is going to jail for his convictions for engaging in violence at a Limerick nightclub in 2019.
Hayes (26) arrived at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday morning to hear his fate but sentencing judge Dara Hayes, said he needed more time to consider the matter.
Hayes’s father, Liam Hayes, told the court he depended on his son to help him run their family dairy farm after he suffered a significant health issue requiring coronary bypass surgery in 2022.
Hayes’s barrister, senior counsel, Brian McInerney, referring to the hurler’s two brothers, Daragh and Cian Hayes, who are both serving jail sentences in Limerick for viciously assaulting a former friend, told the court it should consider that “whilst they [Hayes’s brothers] reside locally, they are unavailable to render any assistance to [Liam] Hayes”.
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Judge Hayes has to make a decision under a “section 99” re-entry order, if he will revoke all, part of or none, of a two-year suspended sentence imposed on Hayes in March 2024, after a jury convicted him on two charges of engaging in unlawful violence at the Icon nightclub, Limerick, on October 28th, 2019.
The jury in that trial acquitted Hayes, Ballyashea, Kildimo, Co Limerick, of a third charge of assaulting carpenter, Cillian McCarthy, causing him harm, outside the nightclub on the same night.
Hayes had been bound by the terms of the suspended sentence “to be of good behaviour and not reoffend” within two years from last March.
He breached these terms when he engaged in dangerous driving in Co Cork in July 2024, four months after the suspended sentences for violent disorder were imposed on him.
The section 99 re-entry of the terms of the suspended sentences were triggered after Hayes was convicted at Mallow District Court in September 2024 of the dangerous driving offence, which he unsuccessfully appealed at Cork Circuit Court last week.
Pádraig Mawe, State solicitor for Limerick city, representing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told Judge Hayes he had discretion over whether or not to activate all, part or none of Hayes’s two-year suspended sentence.
“The court shall revoke the order unless it considers it unjust to do so,” Mr Mawe added.
Mr Mawe revealed that Hayes, had, as part of the terms of his suspended sentences, paid in full €10,000 in general damages to Mr McCarthy, who claimed Hayes kicked him while he was lying on the street outside the nightclub, a charge Hayes denied and was acquitted of.
