George Gibney, the former Irish Olympic swimming team coach, has formally consented to being extradited from the US to Ireland to face 79 sex crime charges.
He has also withdrawn a request to fight his continued detention, which was due to be heard in court on Friday.
Mr Gibney remains in custody in the US on foot of a request to the authorities in Florida, where he has been living, to arrest him for the purposes of extradition.
The 77-year-old is accused of 78 charges of indecent assault and one of attempted rape. The alleged victims were aged between eight and 14 or 15 years when they say they were abused by Mr Gibney, who was their swimming coach in South Dublin at different times between 1971 and 1981.
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In the latest court filings related to his case, Mr Gibney’s lawyer Alec Fitzgerald Hall sets out how he consulted with his client on Tuesday and fully advised him of his rights in the extradition process. This included his rights to a detention hearing and an extradition hearing.
Arising from that meeting, he said Mr Gibney has “decided to withdraw his request to a detention hearing and stipulate to detention”.
He has also stated he wants to “waive his extradition hearing and be extradited to Ireland”.
Mr Fitzgerald Hall added that an “affidavit of waiver of extradition hearing” would be filed “as soon as possible”.
Mr Gibney’s extradition to the Republic will now proceed and he is likely to appear before a Dublin court in the near future.
He had requested a detention hearing in the US, but the US attorney for the Middle District of Florida, Gregory W Kehoe, last week urged the district court in Orlando to deny any application for bail for Mr Gibney pending his extradition.
The court was told that as Mr Gibney was facing such serious criminal charges in Ireland, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail, he had an incentive to flee if granted bail.
In 1993, Mr Gibney appeared before the courts in Dublin charged with 27 sexual crimes. However, he took a High Court challenge to his prosecution and was successful. The court effectively ruled in 1994 that the allegations were too old, and many details were too vague, to warrant a prosecution.
However, legal norms and legislation have since changed in Ireland, meaning the prosecution of historical sexual crimes now regularly occurs. Suspects in historical cases no longer have the grounds they once did to avoid prosecution.
Mr Gibney left Ireland in the 1990s, settling in the US, and remained there for the past 30 years, residing in Florida in recent years.
However, between 2020 and 2022 the BBC-Second Captains podcast, entitled Where is George Gibney?, prompted the four women now accusing him to give statements to the Garda.
A fresh criminal investigation began, with the Director of Public Prosecutions directing in May 2023 that he should face 79 charges, with arrest warrants issued by the courts in Dublin.
Last October, the Irish embassy in Washington formally made a request to the US authorities to arrest Mr Gibney for the purpose of extraditing to the Republic to stand trial. He was detained by US marshals in Florida on July 1st and remains in custody there.
