A POPULAR Sligo businessman and sports figure was last night on a life-support machine after aattack while he was in Belfast for the Ulster-Connacht rugby match last Friday.
Paul Newton (43), a father of two girls aged 12 and 14, was in the intensive care unit of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast after the attack outside his city-centre hotel in Bradbury Place early on Saturday.
Friends said Mr Newton stepped out of the hotel for a cigarette when he was attacked.
He was severely beaten and suffered serious head and facial injuries.
PSNI officers are still trying to piece together what happened.
Mr Newton, who travelled to Belfast with other Connacht rugby fans from his native Co Roscommon, had earlier attended the Friday evening Magners League match at Ravenhill.
His wife Maggie rushed home from a business trip in America to be at his hospital bedside.
Although in Belfast for the rugby match, Mr Newton, who lives with his wife and daughters at Ballydoogan Road, Sligo, is better known as a GAA enthusiast. He is a former chairman of St Mary's GAA club in Sligo town.
A former insurance industry executive, he has run his own business skills coaching company, Newton Performance Coaching, in Sligo since 2003.
He is a former president of the northwest chapter of the Insurance Institute of Ireland.
Police have appealed for contact from anybody who may have witnessed anything unusual in Belfast's Bradbury Place early on Saturday.