LIMERICK HURLER KYLE Hayes will have to wait until Friday to hear if he is going to jail for his convictions for engaging in violence at a Limerick nightclub in 2019.

Hayes, 26, arrived at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court today at 9.30am to hear his fate, however sentencing judge, Dara Hayes, said he needed more time to consider the matter and would finalise the case on Friday.

Hayes’s father, Liam Hayes, told the court he depended on his son to help him run their family dairy farm after he suffered a significant health issue requiring coronary bypass surgery in 2022.

Hayes’ barrister, senior counsel, Brian McInerney, referring to the hurler’s two brothers, Daragh and Cian Hayes, who are both serving jail sentences in Limerick for viciously assaulting a former friend, told the court it should consider that “whilst they (Hayes’s brothers) reside locally, they are unavailable to render any assistance to (Liam) Hayes”.

Judge Hayes has to make a decision under a “Section 99” re-entry order, if he will revoke all, part of, or none, of a two-year suspended sentence imposed on Hayes in March 2024, after a jury convicted him on two charges of engaging in unlawful violence at the Icon nightclub, Limerick, on October 28, 2019.

The jury in that trial acquitted Hayes, Ballyashea, Kildimo, Co Limerick, of a third charge of assaulting carpenter, Cillian McCarthy, causing him harm, outside the nightclub on the same night.

Hayes had been bound by the terms of the suspended sentence “to be of good behaviour and not reoffend” within two years from last March.

Hayes breached these terms when he engaged in dangerous driving in Co Cork in July 2024, four months after the suspended sentences for violent disorder were imposed on him.

The section 99 re-entry of the terms of the suspended sentences were triggered after Hayes was convicted at Mallow District Court in September 2024 of the dangerous driving offence, which Hayes unsuccessfully appealed at Cork Circuit Court last week.

Padraig Mawe, State Solicitor for Limerick City, representing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told Judge Dara Hayes he had discretion over whether or not to activate all part or none of Kyle Hayes’s two-year suspended sentence.

“The court shall revoke the order unless it considers it unjust to do so,” Mawe added.

Outlining the facts of Hayes’s dangerous driving conviction, Mawe said the hurler was detected by Garda Deidre Barrett, driving a white Audi A6 at 155kph in a 100kph speed zone on the N20 on 14 July, 2024.

Whilst speeding, Hayes overtook nine cars on the right lane of the dual carriage way at 7.55pm, was pursued by Garda Barrett and arrested after Hayes told the garda he was “running out of road and had to pull back in” front of the nine cars he had overtaken.

Mawe outlining the facts of Hayes convictions for violent disorder, said the hurler was given concurrent sentences of two years and 18 months after he was “found guilty by a jury of his Limerick peers” on two counts of “engaging in unlawful violence”, inside the Icon nightclub, and outside the nightclub.

Mawe revealed that Hayes, had, as part of the terms of his suspended sentences, paid in full €10,000 in general damages to Cillian McCarthy, who claimed Hayes kicked him while he was lying on the street outside the nightclub, a charge Hayes denied and was acquitted of.

Mawe also said McCarthy told the jury that he had been in the company of a male friend and two female friends at Smyths Bar, attached to the nightclub, when Hayes and another man approached him in a “hostile manner”.

Mawe said McCarthy gave evidence that Kyle Hayes told him to “stay the fuck away away” from the two young women and asked him “do you know who the fuck I am?”.

Mawe said McCarthy said he walked away and was approached again by Hayes and the other man on the dance floor of the nightclub “in a confrontational, aggressive, unsolicited” fashion and “threatened again to stay away from the two females”.

Mawe told Judge Hayes that what followed this was “an unprovoked attack”on McCarthy by Hayes and at least four others inside the nightclub.

Mawe said Hayes and others followed McCarthy, who was injured, outside the nightclub and Hayes “aggressively demanded” to know who McCarthy was.

McCarthy sustained a fractured eye socket and lacerations to his face on the night. He lost income while recovering from surgery to repair his eye injury and suffered headaches, blurred vision, and psychological trauma.

Two gardai told the trial they witnessed Kyle Hayes kicking a man who was lying on the street outside the nightclub on the night, however the trial judge Dermot Sheehan said this man was not Mr McCarthy.

Hayes barrister, McInerney reiterated at today’s court hearing that Kyle Hayes was not involved in any assault on McCarthy on the street outside the nightclub, and that he was acquitted of this charge.

McInerney said Hayes’s dangerous driving conviction was a “million miles away” from his previous violent disorder convictions, and that Hayes was “greatly worried” about the possibility of going to prison.

The barrister submitted the case had “attracted a most enormous degree of publicity” and that it would be “unjust” for the court to revoke all or part of Hayes’ suspended sentence.