A Shinner for the SCC? Oh,the irony

THE news that former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall has been taken into protective custody by the State and will give evidence in the Regency Hotel murder trial in the nonjury Special Criminal Court is laden with supreme irony.

The trial follows the killing of David Byrne at the Regency Airport Hotel in 2016, an event that set off a serious of murders in crimeland.

Historically, Sinn Féin has reserved a particular hatred for the non-jury special court where many members of the IRA were tried and sentenced during the conflict in the North.

Dowdall and his father Patrick have already pleaded guilty to assisting a criminal organisation by booking a hotel room used by one of the gunmen in the

Regency attack.