Nicola Tallent

Often we see when free legal aid isn't granted, they will sometimes go into settlement mode and sit down at a table with the criminal assessor.

You'll never hear the full proceeds of crime case, basically.

You had a story there recently about the amount of damage that was done to the house before it was handed over to the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Maybe we should do something separate on that, but...

Gately's still at the table with this one.

So the house has been taken from him, it's sold, it's gone from under him.

And yet he still is there because of this damage that's been done to the property.

So he's fighting his corner here at this stage.

you know, there was a hearing in... Would he have other assets in the country that could cover that?

Well, that's not part of this case, so we're not going to know if he does necessarily.

Say, for example, if he did get, you know, hit with the bill of 100,000, we'll just say...

he has presumably other assets that they can look to reclaim that.

It's interesting, all right, because there is a lot of the properties that are damaged sometimes before they're actually handed over.

I suppose the famous one was Liam Byrne, wasn't it?

The house in Clondalkin that was burnt out.

Liam Byrne, Sean McGovern took the kitchen out.

One of those Irwins, Patrick Irwin, they also took the kitchen out of the house in Drummineer.

Yeah, a lot of them kind of even removed the, you know, the lighting switches and the walls and everything.

It sort of seems to be an act of defiance and temper against having to hand over the property they're going to.

So it has gone on for a long time.