FORMER Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall is living a miserable existence behind bars as a cleaner.
But the State supergrass is getting regular visits from his wife, we can reveal.
He is not due for release from Limerick Prison until the end of the year.
The disgraced criminal will then enter a new life with a new identity after he was accepted into witness protection.
Dowdall was initially charged with the 2016 murder of Kinahan cartel gangster David Byrne at Dublin’s Regency Hotel.
However, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of facilitating the Hutch gang in the deadly shooting and was handed a four-year sentence.
He later turned State witness against Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, testifying that the crime lord told him he was one of a six-man hit team involved in the gun attack.
But Hutch walked free after being acquitted in 2023 at the Special Criminal Court while Dowdall was left serving his sentence.
Dowdall has remained on the D1 isolation landing in the Limerick lock-up, which he shares with trans inmate Barbie Kardashian.
He passes his days by working as a cleaner but is at “very little else”, with visits from his wife once a week keeping him going.
However, he is much calmer than when he was doing a stint in Dublin’s Wheatfield Prison for falsely imprisoning and water-boarding a man in 2015.
There, the 46-year-old was locked up on a landing with The Monk and other Hutch gang members.
A source told The Irish Sun: “Dowdall lives a fairly miserable and lonely existence in Limerick prison.
“He’s on a landing there with Barbie and he does cleaning as a job.
“He has a bit of a stretch to go yet — at the end of the year at the earliest he will be released.
“But he is causing no trouble whatsoever. When he was in Wheatfield prison, he was a nightmare for officers to deal with and very demanding. In Limerick, he just keeps the head down.”
Upon Dowdall’s release, he will be moving abroad after being accepted into the Witness Protection Programme.
He will likely head to an English-speaking country as part of the highly secretive scheme.
NEW IDENTITY
Dad-of-four Dowdall will be helped to set up with a new identity, a new job and home and will receive limited financial assistance from the State.
It is not clear who among his family members will be joining him.
The former electrician sold his plush €795,000 home on Dublin’s Navan Road last year.
During his evidence against Hutch, Dowdall claimed The Monk was “terrorising” and said he had been hit with “a barrage of more threats and more threats”.
The Special Criminal Court found that Dowdall’s evidence was unreliable, citing his “pattern of lying and alternate character modes”.
ELECTION BID
In November as Hutch geared up to fight for a seat in the general election, he claimed that he had no issue with Dowdall.
Hutch told the Crimeworld podcast: “Jonathan Dowdall is a compulsive liar, a Walter Mitty, and he’s his own worst enemy. Karma will come to him in its own way.
“I won’t be looking for Jonathan Dowdall in any shape or form. I’ve better things going on in me life.
“I spoke to lots of Jonathan’s family, cousins, relations, who are in the constituency and will be voting for me as well. Lovely people.”
