McGovern, who has been described as a ‘senior lieutenant’ in the Kinahan gang, pleaded guilty to two charges of directing the activities of a criminal organisation relating to the Hutch-Kinahan gangland feud.
11:30, 14 Jun 2026Updated 12:10, 14 Jun 2026
Sean McGovern.
Sean McGovern, the senior Kinahan cartel figure jailed for 24 years, is being held in one of Portlaoise Prison’s most tightly controlled sections, where sources describe his daily existence as “a prison within a prison.”
McGovern, who has been described as a ‘senior lieutenant’ in the Kinahan gang, pleaded guilty to two charges of directing the activities of a criminal organisation relating to the Hutch-Kinahan gangland feud. The charges related to his involvement in the lead-up to the murder of Noel Kirwan, an innocent grandfather who was fatally shot in December 2016, and targeting and monitoring James ‘Mago’ Gately with a plan to have him shot dead.
He was jailed for 24 years last week by a three-judge panel at the Special Criminal Court. The 40-year-old, who was extradited to Ireland from Dubai earlier this year, is currently accommodated on the prison’s A Block, a high-security unit where inmates live under heavily restricted conditions.
A source familiar with the regime said: “His world is very small.” Unlike prisoners in the general population, McGovern has little interaction with other inmates and is housed on a landing shared with no more than eight or nine prisoners.
“He does not mix,” the source said. McGovern does not hold a formal prison job but is expected to carry out basic cleaning duties on the landing where he is housed.
Sean McGovern.
Any educational courses he undertakes are conducted on a one-to-one basis with a private tutor rather than in a classroom setting with other inmates. Despite the restrictions, sources say McGovern has earned “enhanced prisoner” status through good behaviour while in custody.
The designation entitles him to additional privileges, including increased access to visits and phone calls compared to prisoners on lower incentive levels. The development marks a stark contrast to the image of McGovern portrayed in court proceedings and international law enforcement investigations, where he was identified as a key figure within the Kinahan organised crime group.
Meanwhile, a former construction worker who encountered McGovern as a teenager recalled being stunned years later when allegations linking him to major organised crime figures emerged. The tradesman said McGovern worked as an apprentice plumber on the same building site for around two months when he was aged 18 or 19.
According to the worker, McGovern regularly boasted about spending weekends firing military-style weapons, including Tech-9s and MAC-10s.
“Every Monday he’d be talking about shooting machine guns on the weekend,” the man recalled. “All the plumbers, electricians and carpenters would be laughing behind his back. We thought he was just looking for approval from the older lads and making the whole thing up.”
The worker said none of the tradesmen took the stories seriously and gave the young apprentice the nickname “McRambo”.
“He knew we called him that but he thought it was a compliment. He didn’t realise we were taking the piss out of him because nobody believed a word he was saying.”
Sean McGovern has been sentenced at the Special criminal Court in Dublin
According to the former colleague, McGovern claimed he travelled to the Dublin Mountains where firearms were tested by men he described as serious criminals.
“He’d say they were shooting at watermelons and turnips and things like that,” the worker said. “He never mentioned Kinahan or anybody by name, but he said the people he was with were very heavy criminals.”
The man said it was only years later, after the eruption of the Kinahan-Hutch feud and the subsequent investigations into the cartel, that former colleagues reconsidered the stories.
“When all the Kinahan and Hutch stuff started coming out, lads who had worked on the site together realised he may actually have been telling the truth all along. At the time we thought nobody in their right mind would go around telling strangers they were hanging around with major criminals and testing machine guns. But he loved to talk. He had a very big mouth.”
The former colleague said he never saw McGovern again after the pair worked together on the site.
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