Was He The Godfather?

He’s sometimes portrayed as the original godfather of the Irish underworld, but the infamous Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne is living proof that crime doesn’t pay.

He once had all the trappings of wealth – the fancy house, fast cars and even a boat – but today the 74-year-old pensioner lives in a bed-sit that’s only slightly bigger than a prison cell.
It’s certainly a dramatic fall from the ostentatious champagne lifestyle that the infamous Dunne brothers flaunted during the height of their notoriety, back in the 1970s and 80s.
“I’m sorry for the way my life’s turned out,” Christopher, as he prefers to be called, says to me. “If I die tomorrow, there’s nobody to fucking bury me. I’ll be a pauper in a pauper’s grave.”
Many will have little sympathy for a man who is widely depicted as the pioneer of serious crime in Ireland – and was the alleged mastermind behind a spate of armed robberies in the early 1970s.
Indeed, the younger Dunne brothers became household names when they were fingered as the main culprits behind the heroin epidemic that exploded on the Dublin streets in the early 1980s. How accurate is this portrayal of the man sitting in front of me?
Christopher Dunne has agreed to do this exclusive interview to set the record straight. His name has resurfaced in several TV documentaries, books and newspaper articles over the past two years, all of which he claims were littered with ‘lies and inaccuracies’. His attendance at a recent funeral turned into a media circus, with the tabloids running full-page stories that described him as the ‘grandfather of Irish crime’.
“I can’t even attend a funeral in peace,” he complains bitterly. “I was never the godfather, I was a good father. I’ve been portrayed as a monster. I’m the most demonised man in Ireland. But there’s a lot of other things involved in Christopher Dunne that people don’t know. Anything that ever has been written about me is lies.”
I explain to him that it will be up to the readers to judge.
“It does not profit me anything to tell you lies,” he says. “What it boils down to is whether you believe me or not. If I was the godfather I wouldn’t be in this position today. I had nice clothes and I went to the best restaurants, but now I just have an old age pension. I have a bed-sit in an old Victorian house. It costs €130 a week and I have rent allowance of €90. I have to survive on about €185 a week. It’s destroyed my health.”
The picture he goes on to paint of himself couldn’t be further removed from the grim portrayal of him in the tabloids.

Christopher Dunne was the eldest of 16 children. In addition, his mother had a further six miscarriages. His parents – Christy ‘Bronco’ Snr, so nicknamed for his love of horses and Ellen – originally lived in an inner city tenement flat, before moving into a terraced council home in Kimmage. His mother ran a stall in the Iveagh Market in the Liberties area, while her husband worked in different odd jobs before eventually getting a position at Guinness Brewery.
Christy Senior lived an unconventional life. In 1939, he received an 18-month sentence for manslaughter: the story, accepted by the courts at the time, was that he had hit a man for either insulting or striking his mother, resulting in the man’s death.
Over 70 years later, his son produces the death cert for the victim, Edward Ruth, and reads the cause of death aloud: “Shock and a coma following injuries in a conflict by Christopher Dunne found guilty of Grievously Bodily Harm’(GBH)”. But that, according to the younger Christopher, is not what happened at all. He lays it out like the Third Secret of Fatima, a glimpse into another, lost world.
“My father never punched anybody that died,” he insists. “My father never killed anybody, murder or manslaughter, or otherwise. Nobody knows this, but it was my grandmother who did it – and he took the rap for her.”
Family history. A moment of anger that escalates into a tragedy. It weighs on some people more than others. Christopher’s mother became the breadwinner in the family. When she fell ill and was unable to work, her son was forced to drop out of school at the age 10. He quickly fell into petty crime, stealing coal and picking pockets to put food on the table. He feels no shame about it.
“I never wanted to be involved in criminal activity,” he says. “When I was young, any time I was involved in crime it would’ve been out of sheer economic necessity, out of sheer hunger. The conditions in Dublin at the time were atrocious – kids used to pick up orange skins off the street and eat them.”
He was introduced to burglaries by his uncle.
“Things were bad so anything my uncle told me to do I’d do it. I got into a few scrapes with him, which were nothing serious. We took a judge’s car one day (from) outside the courts. He’s waving out of the court, ‘That’s my car’ (laughs).
“They took us off the boat in Rosslare. We were arrested with loads of stuff we were bringing to England, but we escaped. There was a manhunt after that. They caught my uncle – and then they caught me.”
At the age of 12, he was sent to Marlborough House, where he says he was badly beaten by the Gardaí; then separately to Carriglea Industrial School in Dun Laoghaire and Mountjoy jail. “I was in Mountjoy when I was 14 years old,” he recalls, “and I was playing handball with the last man to be hung there. I was the youngest prisoner ever in Mountjoy. When I first went in there was only 42 prisoners.
“Carriglea was a brutal place,” he adds. “I actually seen children eating their own woollen socks, it was so bad. But I never witnessed any sexual abuse.”
He eventually escaped from Carriglea and went to England, where he worked in the coalmines and subsequently on deep-sea trawlers. Trauma was never far away. He returned home at age 17, when his brother Hubert, four years younger than him, drowned.
“He was in an industrial school. There was an incident and he saved eight kids from drowning,” Christy claims, “and was then kicked back in by the Brothers to save more kids – and died.”
Christy admits that he introduced his younger brothers to crime. However, he rejects the popular belief that he ‘tutored’ future crime boss Martin Cahill, better known as The General.
“I do take responsibility for the brothers turning out the way they did, because I was their role model. I would’ve given them the proper advice as brothers. But there was no such a thing as an academy like they say in this book or on TV3 – that I started a fucking academy, not only for the Dunne’s but for every Tom Dick and Harry in Ireland. For fuck’s sake. Everything they say about Martin Cahill is a load of bollix.”
There was nothing in Ireland for Christy and so he returned to London to work on building sites. Never far from trouble, he received a nine-month sentence for theft.
“There was this guy giving me the run-around and not paying us for work we did. He was playing games with us and so I kicked in the door and there was money on the table and I took it. He got the police. I got nine months,” he sighs.
He eventually left England in 1960 because he was wanted for questioning in relation to explosives that were used in a post office robbery. Back in Ireland, Christopher went to the campaigning priest Fr Michael Sweetman, whom he’d met previously when he was in custody.
“He was the superior at the Jesuit Retreat in Clontarf and I said, ‘I’m in serious trouble with the British. I’m seeking sanctuary’. He said, ‘Granted’. He was in touch with Charlie Haughey, who was the Minister for Justice, and Charlie phased out the things that the British wanted me for. I got a suspended sentence. I spent two years studying with the Jesuits. I wrote my memoir Wildfire there. I got a £1,500 advance royalty for my manuscript, but it was never published – it was effectively banned. The publisher was told not to bring it out. I don’t have a copy of it now. I stayed two years there in the Retreat – not six months, as the books say.”
Charlie Haughey, later to be Taoiseach, was to play a big part in Christy’s life. On leaving the monastery, Dunne claims, to begin with, that the future Fianna Fáil leader was instrumental in getting him a taxi plate. “From the royalty I got for the book I bought a car and I started a taxi business,” he explains.
Christy is clearly angry at the extent to which his story has been abused by people who – as he sees it – know little or nothing about it.
‘I don’t know whether I was or was not one of the biggest criminals in Ireland,” he says sardonically, “but I know for a fact that I once owned a taxi and the government are telling me I never owned a taxi. I’m so confused now. I’m beginning to think that I never had a taxi and I’m also beginning to think that I was a big mastermind. I don’t know anymore what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
What happened to his taxi?
“I was charged with (handling) explosives and the taxi was taken for forensics and I never got my taxi back. I wish they would investigate my claims of having a taxi. I’d have a livelihood if I still had my taxi.”
He insists that the books on crime in Ireland got a lot of stuff completely wrong.
“I just want to show you something,” he says, producing two books, which state that he was born in October. “Now there’s my passport. I was born in 16 April 1938. Now have a look at my license. The onus on a journalist is to get his facts fucking right. There’s my date of birth and they haven’t even got that accurately. I can refute everything they say about me. They can’t even get my date of birth right.”

Helped to get back on his feet by Fr. Sweetman, Christopher Dunne says that he was determined to go straight. He settled down into married life, starting his own construction firm, C & J Dunne’s. He insists that he started the company from savings made as a taxi driver and not from any ill-gotten gains.
“While I was doing building work, I was also building film sets,” he recalls. “I worked on about 40 films. I think I had a speaking part in the film A Sense of Freedom. I played a warden in that and I got carried away and nearly killed the main star (laughs).”
In 1966, he was approached again by Fr. Sweetman. The Jesuit’s nephew Gerard Sweetman was campaign manager for Fine Gael’s presidential candidate Tom O’Higgins – who went on to be appointed Chief Justice and, later, a judge on the European Court of Justice – and they needed a bit of assistance with the campaign.
“I built a platform on the lorry so people – the entire front bench of the Fine Gael party – could sit on the lorry. It went all around the country and into the most deprived areas of Dublin.
“I gave him my services,” he says, “and my staff services: C & J Dunne, 42 Patrick Street. It was finished after the presidential elections. When I got involved with Tom O’Higgins, that was the beginning of the end of my fucking business. Haughey, who was instrumental in getting me my taxi plate, regarded me as a traitor – biting the hand that fed me.”
Was it true about Haughey being a real ladies man?
“Yeah. What would you think if I said that I know a top model who had a baby for him,” Dunne claims. “He had a secret affair. I never told anybody about it. I will never give her name. I might be one of the only people that might know it. I’d be there on the peripheral and all the Dolly Birds would be there.
“We knew all the showband leaders,” he adds. “I remember one night one of the women won the Miss Ireland competition. Haughey fancied her and when the fucking thing was judged that night I had about ten grand on her and I backed her at 5/1 and she won it. Let’s just say that I was very confident.”
Dunne insists that the ‘singing priest’ Fr Michael Cleary was also determined to ruin him.
“I’d been told that Fr. Cleary debauched young girls where I lived because I was the only one in the area with a car at the time and the girls used to be queuing up outside my house. I was with this girl one time talking and she started crying and she started to tell me about Cleary taking advantage of her.
“I went to Fr. Sweetman and I said ‘there’s a priest in our area he’s been debauching young ones around the place . What did he do? He went up to the hierarchy. Fr. Sweetman told (Archbishop) McQuaid and eventually Cleary was taken out of the area and sent to Ballyfermot – where he done the same thing again.
“Anyway, Cleary destroyed my life. He did it publicly on the TV. That was his revenge. He called me a whoremaster, a drug dealer. Protection rackets. I went out looking for him with a gun and I would’ve fucking shot him on sight. I even went to solicitors. If I’d have bumped into him, he was dead. He put my wife into an early grave. He practically killed me.”
Did he ever meet The Singing Priest again?
“I seen him one time in Mountjoy and he was doing mass on the altar and he was dying of cancer – and I had no sympathy for him. While he was on the altar, he was talking about riding women to the lads and I got up and said to him, ‘You’re only a dirt bird’. And I walked out of the church. A lot of other people walked out with me.”
I ask him did he ever actually kill anybody?
“Not at all. I was once put in a line-up for manslaughter. They said I knocked a man down the country somewhere and he died. It wasn’t me. I’d never leave anybody on the road.
“I’ve never had the occasion to point guns at people. I wouldn’t like to have guns pointed at me. I never hurt anybody. I never even put fear into people. I’ve been in cases where I’ve been portrayed as a monster. Different crimes have their own degree of seriousness. But I don’t have any regrets about whatever involvement I had in crime.”

With his building business in ruins, Christy became associated with the paramilitary organisation Saor Éire, notorious as the first group of serious armed robbers in the Republic. Several Gardaí were murdered during botched robberies.
Between 1967 and 1969, before the emergence of Saor Éire, there had been a mere 18 armed robberies in the State; that figure jumped to an annual average of 150 by the early 1970s. While Christopher describes himself as a Republican, he refuses to confirm or deny if he was a member of the organisation.
“I’m not going to say that I was a member. I can’t say that. I don’t want people to think there’s a muzzle on me, but it’s illegal to be a member or to admit to being a member of a proscribed organisation today in Ireland. I’m a free Irishman. I’m a free Irish Republican.”
Saor Eire translates directly as ‘Free Ireland’.
“I would’ve been active,” he admits. “I was involved in the Troubles. I never knew Martin Cahill before. I gave him an order to go and get all the guns he could fucking get during the Troubles and bring them back to me, which he did. Outside of that, I had no connection (with him) or any other gangland figures. I never worked with Cahill.”
It was reported that one of these guns was used in the murder of Garda Dick Fallon in 1970. Dunne insists that this is only ‘speculation’.
I ask if he fired the shot outside the GPO during a Republican rally to commemorate the death of Saor Eire commandant Liam Walsh. He smiles.
“When I was charged with discharging the firearm outside the GPO, it was on the day of my sister’s wedding – and when the case came to court 300 people at the wedding swore that I was at the wedding and I couldn’t have done it,” he says.
Christopher received his first major conviction – a three-year sentence for receiving stolen goods – in the early 1970s.
“I ended up getting done for receiving a lorry load of food, which was for the North. In 1966, I had no convictions for any type of serious crime. But from ‘69 until ‘72, I had 14 trials pending at the same time for possession of explosives, armed robbery, fraud, assault – assaults on police officers and a judge. I won every trial, except for the lorry.
“When I was in court, I used to do all my own cases and all the students in the law library and young barristers would appear behind me to hear me in the court speaking.”
There were accusations that he hit a judge. He describes the circumstances in comedic terms.
“I never hit the judge,” he says. “I was to be in two courts at the same time. I knew the High Court took precedence over the District Court, so I went to the High Court first. When I was finished in the High Court, I went back to the District Court and he had put a warrant out for my arrest. I told him, ‘I can’t be in two places at the same time’. And then he started to abuse me in the courts, so I ended up knocking him out. I had a book of evidence, which I let fly and it hit him and knocked him off the bench. The police and bailiffs jumped on me and we all fell down the stairs.”
By the time he was released from prison, Christopher’s marriage to the mother of his four children was over. Also, during his association with Saor Éire, many of the Dunne brothers, who had been living in London, returned home and formed a highly organised family-based gang, robbing banks alongside the Cahill brothers. Christopher has always been referred to as the gang boss.
“That’s the way we were viewed by the police and media,” he says, “but I would’ve been involved on my own. I wouldn’t do anything with them because there was a big generation gap between us in ages and they were too gung-ho for me.
“In 1966, I would’ve been 28 years of age and my brother Larry would’ve been 18 and my brother Henry would’ve been younger. So, when I was 28 in 1966 working in the building business on Patrick Street and helping Tom O’Higgins in the presidential campaign, and carrying out the various contracts that I had secured, I wouldn’t have had time to be going around with my brothers and involved in crime. I had a Mercedes then, I had my own sports car, I had my own boat.”
There is an RTE radio interview, from the 1980s, in which he admits working with his brothers – but he says now that this was just petty crime.
“Two of my brothers gave me the lorry load of food for the North of Ireland,” he states. “I’m being tarnished with the same brush. My brothers were responsible for the biggest robberies in Ireland, but I was never involved with my brothers in serious crime. If they ever asked me a question or sought my advice, I’d give it to them. I didn’t even socialise with them. People who were writing at the time presumed that the Dunnes were the main gang and anything that happened they got blamed for it. It’s all now taken as Gospel about me – and the next generation of journalists repeat these lies as fact.”
Was he not the mastermind behind their criminal activities?
“That’s speculation,” he says, adding, “I was never their boss. You keep overlooking the generation gap. Eleven or 12 years is a big gap.”
It irks him how the Dunnes are described as a ‘gang’. “There was never the Dunne gang, there was the Dunne family,” he says. “I resent the word gang, it sounds to me like kids fighting on the streets. The Dunne’s were never a gang.”
What did he make of the allegation that The General crucified a guy?
“That’s a load of bullshit. Anything that’s ever been said about Martin Cahill, it’s somebody’s rampant creative mind has made the man from a gentleman to a monster. They tried to do the same to me. The police have their own media and they can target people and make scapegoats out of them.
“After me, they went really heavy on poor Martin. I watched Gleeson in the film The General – Brendan Gleeson and Martin Cahill would be kindred spirits. When I see the antics of him it reminds me of Martin (laughs). They both had the natural charisma.”
Christopher does acknowledge that he was the prime suspect in many of the biggest crimes in Irish history, including the heist at West’s jewellers in Grafton St. While he was charged with this, he was eventually acquitted. Surely there’s no smoke without fire?
“Yes, I’d agree with that. There’s obviously no smoke without fire. No man is morally obliged to incriminate himself. But I’m not a saint.”
At the time, his family were described as ‘untouchables’, with the cops reportedly in their back pockets.
“That’s only a myth,” he spits. “The untouchables: that’s a load of rubbish. I had 24-hour surveillance on me. The police would follow me into a hotel and they’d come in and sit down beside me. That’s what they did to Martin Cahill. They did it to me first.”
The Dunnes will be forever synonymous with the heroin epidemic that ravaged entire communities in Dublin’s inner city in the 1980s.
According to urban legend, the Dunnes got into selling gear after they had successfully robbed a pharmaceutical factory. Having sold the proceeds for a handsome profit, it dawned on them that they could make more from selling drugs than armed robbery. Christy insists that he never had anything to do with the trade.
“I never had anything to do with robbing the factory,” he says. “And I certainly never had anything to do with drugs. I would never have been comfortable with drugs around. It’s a proven fact that drugs weaken society and destroy people and create a horrendous situation. I’m not afraid to be critical of any of my family.”
He points out that several of the Dunne’s died from drug-related deaths.
“Three sisters, one brother and his wife,” he summarises. “They became addicted to heroin. We’ve had our share of death in our family.”
It has been alleged that he himself once imported 13,000 kilos of hash into the country?
“I never had any involvement with drugs,” he says again. “Listen, when I was active around Dublin as a Republican, we would’ve shot people selling drugs.”
So how does he feel about his brother Larry having introduced heroin into Ireland?
“I disagree with what you’re saying,” he insists. “It was the Iranians and Turks who flooded Europe with heroin to finance their Islamic campaign of bloodshed. They proclaim that the Dunne’s were the first people to bring drugs into Ireland – that’s a load of rubbish. Why haven’t they talked about (who brought) cocaine into the country? Because all the rich people take it.
“I wouldn’t have liked to have been tried under the circumstances and the conditions he (Larry) was tried under. People marching around with placards; people intimidated; the jury intimidated.
“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” he adds. “If you want to know anything about Larry why don’t you talk to him? Nobody has heard his side of the story. Put it this way, would you like to be tried in court and have thousands of people walking up and down outside it, would you? That’s what happened to Larry.”
Did he ever confront his brothers about selling heroin?
“Many times. I told them, ‘If there’s any truth in what I’m hearing, I’m telling you now, pack it up. I don’t want this in the family’. They told me that they weren’t doing anything. They were denying it to me.”

While on holidays in Spain in 1984, Christy was arrested for the robbery of the American Express office in Dublin. He spent almost two years locked up in a Spanish prison until he was finally exonerated.
“I was set up,” he sighs. “The people who ran the American Express place in Dublin were held up in their home. Tied up. I went to Spain on a holiday and somebody had cashed travel cheques in before I went (over there) and the next thing the police arrested me in Spain. I was charged with the robbery of American Express. Then it was robbed again when I was locked up.
“The police there tortured me, and my partner at the time. They’d handcuff you behind your back and then they’d just kick the chair and they had a big plastic basin behind you with the urine and excrement from the cells and you’d fall into it.
“I saw other people in the prison sweeping up noses, ears, fingers – that’s how violent it was. The publicity that preceded me ensured my safety.”
Much of this publicity back home occurred when Hot Press visited him in prison and ran an exclusive feature on the case, which gained huge coverage. “The article in Hot Press explained that I was being framed,” he recalls. “Which I was.”
Christopher was charged with several more bank robberies in the 1980s, but was always found not guilty. However, his luck ran out when in 1992 he was found guilty of carrying out a Tiger Kidnapping, in which a terrified family were held hostage at knife point and a fake bomb was tied to the postmaster – who was ordered to go to the post office and bring back the social welfare payments in the safe, estimated to be £85,000.
“I was innocent of the charge and was denied an appeal, which really reflects badly on our judicial system,” he argues. “I was even denied legal aid. A well-known criminal lived above the post office and he wasn’t even questioned! When I got sentenced to 10 years in 1992, I knew there was no way I was going to beat the case because I knew I was being processed through the judicial system. I’m still waiting for my appeal against the conviction. I served my sentence.”
Ironically, he was sentenced on the basis of evidence given by two junkies and his nephew – along with one of his neighbours.
“The two drug addicts they arrested were unable to walk,” he laughs. “They were unable to commit a robbery and they were dead within a year. My own nephew made a statement against me – but they (the cops) drove him out of his mind. He was brainwashed. He was found dead in James Hospital. Some of my brothers wanted to kill him, but I said, ‘Don’t put your hands on him’.”
During his time in prison, he broke up with his partner. “I didn’t want the children to see me in prison. I told her she’d be better off finding somebody who would be good to her and the kids. I haven’t seen her since.
“None of my children or any of my grandchildren have ever had any problems with the police,” he adds. “None of them have been locked up. I have sons who work for some of the biggest companies in the world and if I was to mention their names they would be sacked.”
One of the Dunne brothers was famously quoted as saying, ‘If you think we’re bad, wait until you see what’s coming behind us.’
So, what does make of crime today?
“Life is very much cheaper now,” Christy says. “The police are responsible for what’s going on – gang wars and people shooting each other. They instigated it – and certain crime reporters in certain parts of the media.
“Ireland is at breaking point with regards to law and order. There is a breakdown in society here and Tallaght is going to be the first place to go and it’s going sooner than you think because I know what’s happening over there. And as soon as Tallaght goes, Clondalkin, West Dublin will be in flames.
“Police are going to be shot. We’re going to see boy soldiers on the streets. It’s going to happen. It’s because of the way people are being treated: people have no say in their lives here. Especially if you’re living out in Tallaght or Limerick or certain parts of Cork – marginalised and deprived and oppressed people.
“You take Limerick and see what’s coming out of there. What did they do in the beginning? They might as well have gave them little fucking tents like the Indians on the prairie – no shops, no facilities, no nothing. And they expect children to grow up normally?”
Having completed his sentence for the tiger kidnapping in 2002, Christopher spent two years in isolation in the wilds of Galway before returning to Dublin. He has been living in poverty in his tiny 12 by 10 foot bed-sit ever since.
“It’s destroyed my health. I can’t even get a home from the Council,” he complains.
He has an icon of Padre Pio on his bed-sit wall.
“I’m sorry for the way my life’s turned out,” he repeats. “But you must remember I never hurt anybody. I never wanted to be involved in criminal activity. I can’t help what they’d done to me when I was a kid – I’m the victim. A lot of the minor convictions I got back then were out of sheer hunger.
“There is another side to me. I’m spiritual. I do a lot of things that ordinary people would say that maybe I’m crazy. I study deeper things. I pray. I do Yoga. I go to all sacred places in Ireland. I climbed Croagh Patrick on my 70th birthday three times.”