What is the story with this Steve Collins lad?
Is he a genuine sort?
Any of the Limerick lads know?
His bullet proof vest will be worthless if he gets a bullet to the head
The pool of blood is a kip…Roy Collins wasn’t whiter than white either
Spends a bit too much time with Paul Williams for me.
I’ve brought this up in one of the Limerick threads before, and how I felt he had become a bit of a media whore.
I see he’s on some show again tonight. Hardly a week goes by where he doesn’t have a quote in some media outlet.
it was pointed out on that thread though that maybe it was a form of defense mechanism, by putting himself in the spotlight so much it would make it very very hard for the Dundons to touch him.
I don’t know much about his background, but both the pubs he owned would have been fairly rough joints.
Yeah genuine enough. A tough bastard too… sat next to a relative of his in school and he used to be telling me about the scraps he used to get into
trying to run the pub when he intially took it over.
Not many would have gone to court the first time round, and he has suffered since but keeps on fighting
Steve Collins giving an interview from the biggest dogging spot in the mid west :lol:
Great to see FATHER Joe is keeping well
B)
good friend of the League of Ireland I believe
Fair play to him I say. Often had a pint in Brannigans but that was before it all kicked off.
I remember people saying that as well but I didn’t really know a lot about the case. Watching that you’d have to say they’ve gone through a lot. There wouldn’t be much honour in hiding under a rock and saying nothing either.
Steve Collins talking to Joe Nash now on Limericks Live 95FM…
Watched this last night. Nice set of wheels under him in fairness…
the Pike Inn was an alright place and I had many pints there. How did it change and how did he become involved?
Steve is a good guy, his brother Roddy on the other hand… 
Heroic Collins family face financial ruin
Sunday July 18 2010
Limerick publican Steve Collins, whose son Roy was callously murdered, is facing financial ruin and has lost €5m as a direct result of his family standing up to the notorious McCarthy-Dundon Limerick crime gang.
As he battles to stave off bankruptcy, Mr Collins has called on the Government to help him to move his business out of the gang’s heartland in an attempt to keep his family safe and help his business survive.
The businessman, whose couragous stand against those who killed his son resulted in the introduction of tough new anti-gang laws, has accused the Government of abandoning him and his family despite promises to look after them.
Mr Collins owns three pubs and a casino but has lost two of his businesses since standing up to the feared crime outfit. He said he was now “going under” as he attempted to keep one pub afloat and repay the banks for businesses that he can no longer operate because of gang intimidation.
“We’re not talking hundreds of thousands – we’re talking millions here. We’ve had a severe financial hit on this – we’ve lost up to €5m,” he said.
The testimony of his adopted son Ryan Lee had crime boss Wayne Dundon jailed – but he was freed earlier this year and fled to England in an attempt to shake off round-the-clock garda surveillance.
The only bar still run by the family, The Steering Wheel, is located at the very centre of McCarthy-Dundon territory in Limerick’s Southill, the troubled southside estate due to be rebuilt under the Government’s €4bn regeneration scheme. Now Mr Collins wants urgent action to help move his family away.
“They should take the pub off me and open up something else for me,” he said. “I don’t want anything off them – I’m not looking to make money out of my son’s death. I’m looking for help to put my business back in line to what it was before all this happened.”
The Steering Wheel is one of the few businesses that operates in Southill. The area is in the McCarthy-Dundon gang’s heartland and as a result thugs are free to openly intimidate the Collins family.
Mr Collins said government ministers had admitted that the Steering Wheel was the worst place he and his sons could be – yet they have failed to help him leave the area.
At a meeting three months ago Mr Collins said Justice Minister Dermot Ahern and Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy had agreed to examine ways to help the Collins family but that nothing had happened since.
“They told me that I am in the most vulnerable place I could be and they are still leaving me there,” he fumed.
"I would feel that I’m in danger, my kids feel that they are in danger. We have to go to work there and wear bullet-proof vests. They are putting my case on the long finger and they can go along then and give billions to Nama – give billions to bankers when our safety would only cost a pittance.
“I’m just getting a bit browned off with it now, you can only take so much of loss and it’s getting to the end of it now for me.”
Mr Collins’s ordeal began when Wayne Dundon threatened to kill Ryan Lee for refusing to serve his 14-year-old sister Annabel in Brannigans Bar in 2004. Despite threats that they faced death if they testified, the family stoically went ahead with the case and entered the witness protection programme.
Shortly afterwards, Brannigans Bar was burnt to the ground, and last year Mr Collins’s eldest son, Roy, was gunned down while he worked at the casino, which stands alongside The Steering Wheel, also at the very centre of McCarthy-Dundon territory.
Mr Collins believes his family has been abandoned by the Government, despite promises to look after them.
"I’ve been hung out to dry. They’ve left us to swing for it now and it’s not fair. They need to get it together and they need to get it sorted. You have to understand it’s all very fine standing up to any kind of criminal but with the kind of criminals that we stood up to the Government knew there was going to be a big backlash. We should have been looked after – I took the most dangerous man off the streets.
“I don’t know if compensation is the word or not but I want help to continue in business. I am going under now, every day we are going under. Every month it gets harder to find the mortgage to pay for Brannigans, which has been closed now for five years.”
His voice rising in anger, Mr Collins added: "It’s bad enough dealing with the death of your son without having these other worries on top of you. I shouldn’t have these other worries. You put those worries on top of that and then the everyday worry about whether we are going to survive the day: you put all that together and you can just imagine what my life is like. I think it’s just totally unfair that we have been left swinging like this.
“I’ve gone to the top with this and even the ministers that were talking to me, they know exactly what’s happening. It’s cruel of them to put us through this,” he said.
- Aine de Paor
I find this staggering. Surely if your business isn’t going well you sell it and move on, you don’t expect the government to step in and bail you out regardless of what has happened? I find this all very unseemly.
Since when is the Steering Wheel pub in Southill? :rolleyes:
Poorly researched journalism there.
I read this yesterday as well. Very odd.
The people in Roxboro will be very suprised to learn they have moved into Southhill.
The Garda station is in spitting distance of the pub aswell so the whole things a bit bizarre.
I would venture to say the reason his pub isn’t doing well is because its a shithole filled with knackers, built in a shopping centre, which has fuck all foot traffic.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but wasn’t the steering wheel closed for drug selling recently enough.
I never heard that.
It’ll always be remembered as the spot where the Limerick lads ran the Scumrock rovers fans all the way out past Castletroy.