Gerard Hutch trial: Jonathan Dowdall accused of 'opportunistic lie'

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

A former Sinn Féin councillor has been accused by a lawyer for Gerard Hutch of telling an "opportunistic lie" about the murder of David Byrne.

Mr Hutch, 59, from the Paddocks, Clontarf, is on trial for murdering Mr Byrne during a boxing weigh-in at Dublin's Regency Airport Hotel in 2016.

Jonathan Dowdall, who is serving four years for facilitating the murder, is giving evidence at the trial.

Also on Tuesday, Dowdall denied ever being an IRA member.

However, he admitted gardai (police) had searched his house a month after the Regency Airport Hotel shooting because they suspected that he was linked to the IRA.

Mr Byrne's murder was the second killing in the Hutch-Kinahan feud that has claimed 18 lives.

In conversations with the accused secretly recorded by police, Dowdall told Mr Hutch that he had "more balls than anybody".

• Dowdall says he did not know room to be used by killers

• Ex-Sinn Féin councillor 'feared' the Hutches

• Gerard Hutch trial: Secret recordings can be used in court

On Tuesday morning, Dowdall said that was a reference to his testimony that Mr Hutch had told him he shot David Byrne.

However, Brendan Grehan, SC, for Mr Hutch, accused him of telling an opportunistic lie as the recording clearly shows the comment was a reference to Dowdall asking Mr Hutch about killing a Kinahan associate in Spain.

In the recording Mr Hutch said that would be a "terrible thing to do".

Jonathan Dowdall is a former Sinn Féin councillor

Dowdall described as nonsense comments he made in the secret recordings about getting dissident republicans to kill associates of the Kinahan crime gang.

He admitted that in the conversations he and Mr Hutch discussed handing over three AK47 guns to dissident republicans "for free".

He said the comments were bravado and nervousness and claimed he was on tablets for depression at the time.

Dowdall has told the court that Mr Hutch admitted to him that he was one of two men who shot 33-year-old Mr Byrne dead.

He has accepted there is no corroboration of that.

Asked why he hadn't raised Mr Hutch's alleged admission Dowdall said: "I wouldn't have asked him questions."

The three judge non jury court has previously heard the secret recordings of the two men were collected as they travelled to and from Northern Ireland after the murder.