The McCarthy-Dundon's is a criminal gang based in

Limerick City Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Their main base is Ballinacurra Weston on Limerick's southside but they also have a strong presence in Southill and in the northside suburb of

Moyross Moyross () is a suburb and council estate in Limerick city in Ireland. Moyross is located on the city's north side and is the largest housing estate in Limerick. The Roman Catholic parish of Moyross is one of 60 parishes in the Diocese of Limer ...

. The gang, involved in drug dealing,

extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, ...

and

armed robbery Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...

, have been central players in the Limerick feud, which has claimed up to 13 lives. The feud, which involves several criminal families, mainly the McCarthy-Dundons, the Ryans and the Keane-Collopy gang from St. Mary's Park, has been ongoing since 2000. The gang have also been responsible for the high-profile murders of several innocent people unconnected to gangland, including night club bouncer Brian Fitzgerald, shot dead in 2002, the murder of Shane Geoghegan, shot in a case of mistaken identity in 2008 and businessman Roy Collins, who was murdered in 2009. Gardaí suspect the gang helped organise the murder of Baiba Saulite in 2006. The mother-of-two was shot dead outside her home in Swords, Dublin by a lone gunman. It is suspected the murder was ordered by her ex-husband, Lebanese gangster Hassan Hassan. While in prison he approached gang members to help organise the murder. Two gang members were convicted in 2008 of conspiring to possess weapons after a joint operation between Gardaí and undercover agents from the

Serious Organised Crime Agency The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom which existed from 1 April 2006 until 7 October 2013. SOCA was a national law enforcement agency with Home Office sponsorship ...

in the UK. Glen Geasley (27), and Sean Callinan (21) were jailed after a plot to import weapons to be used against the gang's rivals. The weapons included rocket launchers,

AKM The AKM () is an assault rifle designed by Soviet small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1959. It is the most ubiquitous rifle of the Kalashnikov rifles. It was developed as a replacement to the AK-47 introduced a decade prior. Introduc ...

assault rifles and uzi submachine guns. The

Criminal Assets Bureau The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) ( ga, An Biúró um Shócmhainní Coiriúla) is a law enforcement agency in Ireland. The CAB was established with powers to focus on the illegally acquired assets of criminals involved in serious crime. The aims ...

seized two bullet-proof BMW's from gang members in 2009. The cars, worth €150,000 and registered to brothers and senior gang members, Wayne and Gerard Dundon, were imported from Germany where they had been modified with bullet-proof glass and reinforced armoured doors. In recent years, the leaders of the McCarthy-Dundon's, Wayne, John and Dessie Dundon, have been sentenced to life imprisonment for different murders, resulting from gang members and relatives of the brothers becoming supergrasses like Thomas ONeill. Their brother Gerard Dundon was jailed for four years in 2018 after he was found guilty of possessing a restricted firearm without a license. A bench warrant for the arrest of their sister Annabel Dundon was issued in 2011 after she was accused of threatening to kill another woman. However, the charges against her were eventually withdrawn by the DPP in 2017 because she had been living outside of the jurisdiction of Ireland for a number of years. The gang has had no real power on the streets of

since 2010.

References

Further reading