Former INLA member and so-called "Border Fox" Dessie O'Hare faces the prospect for the next 22 years of being returned to prison to complete his 40-year sentence if he reoffends, it has emerged. O'Hare was released from Castlerea Prison, Co Roscommon, on Thursday, April 13th, under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.
He was serving a 40-year sentence handed down in 1988 for the kidnapping and assault of Dublin dentist John O'Grady.
During the 1987 kidnapping a section of Dr O'Grady's two little fingers were hacked off by Dessie O'Hare using a hammer and chisel.
O'Hare was transferred nearly four years ago from Portlaoise Prison, a maximum-security facility, to the minimum-security jail at Castlerea.
In September 2000 he began a legal challenge to force the State to release him more quickly under the terms of the Good Friday agreement. In October 2002 Mr Justice Aindrias Ó Caoimh in the High Court said there should be "no foot-dragging" in the matter.
O'Hare, originally from Keady, Co Armagh, is the last of the State's inmates to qualify for early release under the terms of the agreement.
However, in the Republic any prisoners released under the agreement are set free under licence. This means they can be returned to prison to serve the remainder of their sentence if there is evidence they are engaging in unlawful activity. O'Hare will face this prospect until 2028, when his sentence would have expired.
After that point he can only be jailed again if he is convicted of a new offence publishable by a term of imprisonment.
In a letter to the governor of Portlaoise Prison announcing O'Hare's transfer to Castlerea in late 2002, a Department of Justice official said "an appropriate programme designed to assess [O'Hare's] suitability and readiness for release should be put in place from next July ".
O'Hare was granted a short period of strictly supervised temporary release in November 2003. On that occasion he attended the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation, Co Wicklow, and was driven to and from the centre by prison staff. However, he was allowed to spend time with his wife at the centre.
It was his first period of temporary release from prison.
Public reaction on that occasion was so strong that Minister for Justice Michael McDowell publicly denied media reports O'Hare would be freed before the end of that year.
Since then he has enjoyed a number of periods of unsupervised temporary release as part of preparations to permanently free him. On one occasion last November he broke the rules of his release when he returned to prison with a mobile phone and prescription drugs.
The infringement was regarded as minor and did not adversely impact his long-term release programme.
Prison sources said that while O'Hare was set free on Holy Thursday, his current period of release is a short-term one. He will return to the Castlerea jail in two weeks. However, once he has complied with the conditions of his release he is expected to be granted permission to leave again immediately, effectively ending his life behind bars. During his period in Castlerea he has been housed in an area of the prison called "the Grove", a small cluster of seven bungalows in the prison campus where inmates live outside of a prison regime.
