Virgin Media Television is set to air a major new Irish crime documentary this month, marking ten years since one of the most notorious gangland attacks in the State’s history.
The Regency: 10 Years On will premiere on Tuesday, 10 February at 9pm on Virgin Media One and Virgin Media PLAY, revisiting the 2016 shooting at Dublin’s Regency Hotel that left David Byrne dead and triggered a violent feud that reshaped modern organised crime in Ireland.
On 5 February 2016, gunmen disguised as Gardaí stormed a public boxing weigh-in at the north Dublin hotel in a brazen daylight attack that stunned the country. The murder quickly became the catalyst for an unprecedented escalation in gangland violence, as long-simmering tensions between the Hutch and Kinahan groups erupted into open warfare.
Regency CCTV
In the years that followed, Ireland witnessed a relentless cycle of retaliatory killings, with communities left traumatised and Garda resources stretched to breaking point. By late 2018, the feud had claimed 18 lives, dominating headlines and forcing a dramatic rethink of how organised crime was policed in the State.
The new documentary revisits the attack in detail, examining the extensive Garda investigations that followed and the extraordinary criminal trials that gripped the public. It also explores how the case altered Ireland’s understanding of organised crime, both domestically and internationally.
With the Kinahan Cartel now under intense global pressure and key figures living abroad, The Regency: 10 Years On asks whether the case could ever return to the courts — and whether those believed to have orchestrated the attack have ultimately evaded justice.
The programme features interviews with crime journalists, retired Gardaí and experts who have followed the story from the very beginning. Among them is former Garda Assistant Commissioner Dr Pat Leahy, who reflects on how Byrne’s killing became the pivotal turning point in the feud.
“Once David Byrne was killed... that was the spark that ignited the feud, I don't think there was any stopping it at the stage. It really was a case of 'kill them all',” he says.
Former Assistant Garda Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan also recalls the immediate aftermath and the scale of the challenge facing law enforcement.
“We realised there was going to be a backlash. It came fast and furious and went on a spiral of violence,” he explains.
A decade on, The Regency: 10 Years On offers a sobering reflection on an attack that defined an era, the bloody conflict that followed, and the unanswered questions that still linger ten years later.
