The senior gangland figure confirmed he would be running as a TD in the constituency when he came back from Lanzarote earlier this week, where he paid €100,000 in bail. He is currently being investigated for alleged money laundering in Spain.
Ms McDonald, who topped the poll in Dublin Central four years ago, earlier this week did not condemn Hutch’s Dáil bid.
“I am not making a commentary on any other individual in Dublin Central except to say that I have worked very hard for these communities, that I wish to represent them again, and that I want Janice Boylan walking through the gates of Leinster House alongside me,” she said at the time.
Speaking at the party’s policy launch on immigration today, Ms McDonald said she “absolutely” condemns him.
“I absolutely condemn him, I am on record… as a matter of fact, there’s nobody more on record than I in condemning that. I represent the communities that suffer because of so-called gangland warfare,” she said.
“I represent communities that have suffered the ravages of the heroin epidemic from the 1980s, and all of the chapters thereafter.
“I roundly condemn Gerry Hutch or anybody else who is involved in crime and in particular those who bring the misery and the heartache of drug addiction, drug enslavement, drug debt and all of the violence that stems from that.”
She said who runs for election is a “matter for electoral law” and said her fellow constituency candidates – such as TD Paschal Donohoe, who has been in Government – should have changed laws if they believed Hutch shouldn’t be allowed to run.
“If they were that worried about somebody like him stepping on to the pitch, well, then they should have changed the law to make it so that they couldn’t and they haven’t,” she said. “If he wants to run for election, that’s his business.”
The Monk is long suspected of having planned two of the biggest armed robberies in the history of the State.
Gardaí believe he has been involved in wholesale cannabis importation as part of the Hutch organised crime gang.
He has been the “patriarch” of the Hutch family, which has been embroiled in a feud with the Kinahan cartel for a number of years.
