Gerard Hutch admitted hotel murder, says Jonathan Dowdall

Gerard Hutch has pleaded not guilty to the murder of David Byrne

Former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall has claimed Gerard Hutch told him that he and another man shot dead David Byrne.

Mr Hutch is on trial for murdering the 33-year-old during a boxing weigh-in at Dublin's Regency Airport Hotel in 2016.

Dowdall was due to stand trial for the same offence, but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of facilitating murder.

Giving evidence at the Special Criminal Court, Dowdall said he met Mr Hutch in a park in the days after the shooting.

He said Gerard Hutch told him that he had shot dead Mr Byrne alongside another man referred to in court as Mago Gateley.

"He said it was him and Mago Gately who were at the hotel and had shot David Byrne. He was upset and saying how he was not happy about shooting that young lad David Byrne dead," Dowdall told the court.

Dowdall also said that Mr Hutch was "very agitated" when he met him in the days after the murder.

Dowdall was jailed for four years after admitting to facilitating the killing by renting a room at the hotel.

Gerard Hutch from the Paddocks, Clontarf, denies the murder charge.

'Lives at stake'

Jonathan Dowdall is a former Sinn Féin councillor

The court was previously told that the murder of Mr Byrne was carried out as part of a feud between the Hutch and Kinahan crime gangs.

Dowdall told the court that Gerard Hutch's brother Patsy asked him to use his republican contacts to ask them to act as mediators in the feud.

Dowdall emphasised that he spoke to "dissidents and not provisionals".

He said he did so because "so many lives were at stake".

He also said he was asked by Patsy Hutch to book a room at the Regency Airport Hotel.

Witness protection programme

Lawyers for Mr Hutch, 59, had previously argued at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin that Dowdall's willingness to give evidence against their client was a quid pro quo for having the murder charges dropped.

The presiding judge in the court, Ms Justice Tara Burns, rejected that argument.

Dowdall has agreed to take part in the Irish witness protection programme in order to give evidence at the trial.

He was present in court to hear a garda (Irish police) superintendent from the state's witness protection programme give evidence that his admission to the programme was not performance-related to the evidence he gives against Gerard Hutch and was "completely independent".

To preserve her anonymity she was called Supt X.

On Friday, a barrister for the prosecution indicated that it could be mid-January at the earliest before a final decision is made on Dowdall's application to join the witness protection programme.