The fugitive nephew of disgraced banking tycoon Seán Quinn has made his second public appearance over the weekend, being spotted once again at a GAA match.

Despite a High Court warrant having being issued for his arrest some ten days ago, and an unsuccessful 'manhunt' launched to ascertain his whereabouts, Peter Daragh Quinn looked relaxed and carefree when he was photographed by the Irish Independent attending a football fixture on Sunday.

Quinn's nephew has essentially exiled himself into Northern Ireland - a UK jurisdiction - where police authorities in the South have no powers to arrest him.

Efforts to extradite the shady clan member back to the South to face charges will likely fail, as the young Quinn is only being wanted on civil rather criminal counts, with forced re-patriation only possible in respect of the latter.

Support for the Quinn family and its patriarch tycoon Sean runs considerably stronger in some parts of the North, with a prominent support rally being held to demonstrate allegiance with the beleaguered banking clan.

Quinn, once Ireland's richest man, is credit with bringing employment to many jobs blackspots while he was at the helm of the Quinn Group, and still retains some prominent backers, including sports starts and airline bosses, who are clearly unhappy at the way things have turned out for the family.

Support for the Quinn tribe in the South, however, runs at a somewhat lower ebb.

The Commercial Court's Justice Peter Kelly - among the most outspoken members of Ireland's judiciary - launched a scathing attack on the discredited banking boss last week, describing attempts by him and his relatives to put assets outside the reach of creditors as a scheme of 'mesmerizing complexity', while accusing the fallen financial doyen of being the most devious doer whose legal dirty laundry had ever been probed by the tribunal.

Justice Elizabeth Dunne, of the High Court, has also proven herself to be not exactly enamored by the Quinns' seeming preference to do jail time rather than be forced to hand over any of their multi-million international property portfolio, and other assets, to creditors.

She described the family's contempt of Court as "outrageous", and in a stern warning to other members of the conniving Quinn cabal put Quinn Snr.'s son, Sean Jr., behind bars for three months.

Nephew Peter Darragh was also sentenced to jail-time at that hearing, but was declared a fugitive after failing to turn up at the Court hearing, despite having lodged a sworn statement just hours earlier.

Justice Dunne gave Peter's pie-in-the-sky excuse of being too 'ill' to appear before the tribunal short shrift, but efforts to coerce the man on the run to appear before an Irish court will probably falter before the Irish legal system's inability to put white collar crime on a criminal, rather than civil, footing.

Tweeters unhappy


Irish tweeters were clearly angry at the young Quinn's ability to flaunt the Court order by appearing at two GAA matches over the weekend.

"Peter Darragh Quinn on the run nips down to watch the GAA should be in jail, p**k," Neill Coyne, a musician and writer, tweeted.

Simon Harris, a Fine Gael TD for the Wicklow constituency, tweeted that, "Peter Darragh Quinn is making a mockery of the Irish Courts and laws and by extension the Irish people. Running from the law of our land."

"Brazen doesn't even begin to cover it," another Tweeter opined.