Limerick hurler Kyle Hayes deemed suitable for community service instead of jail time

David Raleigh

Kyle Hayes’s availability for the Limerick senior hurling team this season was given a boost, after a court heard he has been deemed suitable for 180 hours of community service instead of three months in jail after he breached the terms of a two-year suspended sentence for violent disorder.

Hayes (26), of Ballyahsea, Kildimo, Co Limerick, appeared before Limerick Circuit Criminal Court on Monday as part of “Section 99 Re-entry” proceedings.

The hearing was triggered after Hayes engaged in dangerous driving at Mallow, Co Cork, four months into a two-year suspended sentence that was imposed on him in March 2024, after a jury convicted him of committing violent disorder at the Icon nightclub, Limerick, on October 28th, 2019.

On July 14th, 2024, Hayes was recorded by a Garda overtaking nine cars in a row on a stretch of the N20 Cork-Limerick dual carriageway, while driving 55kph above the 100kph speed limit.

Hayes subsequently lost an appeal against the driving conviction on March 12th, for which he was given a two-year driving ban and fined €250.

On Monday, Hayes’ barrister Brian McInerney told Judge Colin Daly that Hayes had fully engaged with the Probation Service after the court had requested the service report on his suitability for community service in lieu of the court activating three months of the hurler’s two-year suspended sentence for violent disorder.

Mr McInerney said the service had deemed Hayes suitable for work in the community, but he did not disclose what type of work the hurler would take on.

Judge Daly adjourned the matter to May 19th for the community service order to be finalised by Judge Dara Hayes, who had heard the matter previously.

Judge Hayes told a hearing of the Section 99 matter last month that he would jail Hayes for three months if he was deemed unsuitable for the community service order.

Summarising the events from the Icon nightclub, Judge Hayes said Kyle Hayes was one of two men who “aggressively approached” the injured party Cillian McCarthy inside the nightclub and that, later on, Kyle Hayes was one of a group of four males who “attacked” Mr McCarthy on the dance-floor ooff the nightclub.

The judge said two gardaí had given evidence at Kyle Hayes’s trial that they saw the hurler kicking a man, who was lying on the street outside the nightclub, but the judge said this man was not Cillian McCarthy.

The judge said the trial jury acquitted Hayes of a charge of assault causing harm to Mr McCarthy and that Hayes had paid €10,000 in damages to Mr McCarthy as part of the terms of his two-year suspended sentence.

Judge Hayes said sworn testimony given to the court by Kyle Hayes’s father, Liam Hayes, that he depended on Kyle to help him run their family farm after he had undergone heart surgery “did not assist” nor “persuade” him in his decision to order community service in lieu of a jail sentence.

Hayes’s barrister told the judge that his client’s brother’s, who are both in jail in relation to an entirely separate criminal matter which did not involve Kyle Hayes, were not in a position to help out their father on the farm.

Last January, Daragh Hayes (37) and Cian Hayes (33) were jailed for two-and-a-half years, and two years respectively, after they pleaded guilty to one count of an unprovoked assault on their neighbour and friend, Ciaran Ryan, causing him harm, and to one count of producing a hurley and a large wrench they used to beat Mr Ryan, causing him serious injuries.