Niall Donald

So you're just back from court, Eamon, where we, I suppose, heard the mitigation on behalf of Sean McGovern, who was due to be sentenced, obviously as we've spoken about a number of times this week, for his role in the murder of Noel Dughead-Kieran on behalf of the Kinnan cartel.

Today, his defence got their chance, I suppose, to put before the court any reasons why they might reduce the sentence or give him a lesser sentence when he's finally given that tariff.

I mean, some of the issues that they brought up were like, it's kind of almost the very standard defense, isn't it?

He was a talented young sportsman.

Yeah, so obviously, you know, if you're in Dublin, it tends to be he was a talented footballer or could have played in England.

And sometimes in the country, it was a...

a talented GAA guy who played a little bit for the minors would be in the defence.

But that was put before the court.

And he's trying to, I suppose, get at what McGovern's role is and maybe trying to situate him as a lesser lighter.

Yeah.

So all of this is going to, I suppose, clearly Sean McGovern accepts he's a part of this murder plot.

He accepts all of that as fact.

But really what his defence are trying to suggest or show is that there was other people kind of ahead of him really in the food chain or at an equivalent level to him in the food chain.

And they're looking at how they've been dealt with by the courts.

Yeah, and I mean, they're obviously all trying to show all this for a reason in that they're trying to maybe suggest that he's one of many that are operating in this tier of the Kinnegan cartel rather than him being a sort of boss.

And they come back to that again and again, don't they?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and of course that is his defence.

I mean, the accepted facts are still that, you know, while they have an interest in that, because other people have been sentenced in relation to this,

to the murder of Noel Duggay-Kieran, which we spoke in detail about on a podcast just 24 hours ago.