Dessie O'Hare wants to start a construction firm, write Evelyn McClafferty and Conor McMorrow
Dessie O'Hare says he wants to work with the disabled and eventually start his own construction company when he is released from prison.
In a letter sent from Portlaoise Prison ahead of last weekend's move to Castlerea, O'Hare said he felt entitled to release under the Belfast Agreement, and was making plans for the future.
"I will start out sweeping the floors for these people until I build their trust. Then hopefully I will be able to start my construction company," he said in relation to his plans to help build houses for the mentally and physically disabled after release.
"I would be able to do everything from the foundations up. I would just have to sub-contract the plumbing and electrical work."
When we visited O'Hare in Portlaoise recently, we were struck at first by the small stature - just a fraction over five feet - of someone with such an infamous reputation. In a blue shirt, white fleece jacket and tracksuit bottoms, he looks 10 years younger than his 46 years. We saw the bullet wounds that testify to the violent career of the Border Fox, the most striking of which stretches from his right elbow to his right wrist. In the visiting room, he adopts Ashtanga yoga positions. He says this method of yoga kept him sane in Portlaoise Prison in recent years.
It has been 15 years since the O'Grady kidnapping. O'Hare wants to talk about why he believes he should be released under the Belfast Agreement, but he is not keen to discuss his paramilitary activities. He says he does not want to incriminate himself by discussing specific "military operations" but he does refer to the 1987 O'Grady kidnapping as "that incident" that he had spent four years planning. But he does recall a feeling of disbelief and disappointment when he and his gang crashed into Dr Austin Darragh's Tudor-style house in Cabinteely only to find that his intended kidnap victim had not lived there for over four years. "Oh f**k!" he remembers saying on learning that it was not Dr Darragh's home.
When asked about the current political situation in Northern Ireland, O'Hare says the island of Ireland will experience "a wave of peace as has been seen with the peace process, a wave of justice as has been seen by the tribunals in the Republic and a wave of freedom" which he believes "still has to reach the Irish people".
He recalls being released in 1986 after serving the previous seven years in Portlaoise. On his release he "hit the ground running" and he was "ready for war".
"But I found that many republicans, even in 1986, were more concerned with money than ideals."
He had never seen a "hole-in-the-wall" bank machine being used, apart from on television while in jail. He recalls driving down O'Connell Street in Dublin in 1986 and seeing a queue of people waiting to use an ATM. O'Hare did not have time to see how it worked that day, but he says he looks forward to using one when he gets released.
If he found the Ireland of 1986 a very different place, how might he cope with life on the outside in 2002? He suggests that he might be apprehensive crossing the road, now that there seems to be so much extra traffic.
How does he see his future?
"I'm homeless, I'm penniless and I'm jobless, yet I'm the happiest I've ever been," he says.
Upon his release he hopes to work voluntarily with physically disabled and mentally challenged individuals. A builder by trade, O'Hare hopes to set up a small construction company. His ambition is to assist them in building houses "by the handicapped, for the handicapped".
We were not allowed to take notes in the visiting room at Portlaoise Prison, but in a letter from him responding to questions from us, O'Hare says others who have been released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement have been given a chance to get on with their lives, a chance he should now have.
"Each day for the last four years my mother, wife and children watch convicted murderers and other ex-POWs from both sides of the divide driving to their work and home again to their families, and getting on with their lives.
"Three psychiatrists and the chief clinical psychologist with the Department of Justice have all given me favourable psychiatric reports and stated that I am compos mentis."
Evelyn McClafferty and Conor McMorrow are journalism students