Gardai in south Dublin are investigating several theories about a shooting at the home of Mr Kevin Meehan whose son, Brian, is currently before the Special Criminal Court on a charge of murdering the journalist Veronica Guerin.
Mr Meehan snr. received a gunshot wound to his arm, it is believed, when a gunman called to the front door of his home in Stanaway Road in the Crumlin area at around 11 p.m. on Monday.
Mr Meehan snr is awaiting trial on seven money-laundering charges relating to almost £166,000 in bank drafts and other money seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau in a Viennese bank in May 1997.
Over the past month Mr Meehan and his wife, Frances, have attended daily at the trial of their son at the Special Criminal Court in Green Street. In the past week he was wearing a neck brace.
It was not clear yesterday what Mr Meehan, who is 59, had told gardai. However, from other sources gardai were told that a lone gunman called to the house and opened fire on Mr Meehan when he answered the front door.
It is believed two shots were fired, one hitting Mr Meehan in the forearm and the other missing him and hitting a wall.
One of Mr Meehan's daughters, Vanessa, figured prominently in media reports surrounding the previous trial of another Dublin man, Paul Ward, who was convicted of murdering Ms Guerin. Ms Meehan and Ward had been in a relationship for several years before his conviction for murder last November. She is now in a relationship with another south Dublin man.
It is understood that Ms Meehan was in her parents' home when the shooting took place and helped her father.
It was not clear yesterday if there was any description of the gunman, but local people are understood to have seen a man running to a car which was driven off by another man just after the shooting.
One of the lines of inquiry being followed by investigating gardai is that Mr Meehan might have been the target of a south Dublin criminal, a man also in his 50s who was a close associate of the gangland figure Martin Cahill who was himself killed in August 1994.
Cahill was shot dead, gardai believe, by a republican gunman at the behest of another criminal gang which subsequently took over much of Cahill's drug-dealing and other criminal activities on the south side of the city.
Cahill's associate has served several jail sentences in the past 15 years and has been shot twice as a result of continuing gang-related rivalries, yet he has returned to good health and is reported to be once again involved in drug dealing and other low-level crime in the south of the city.
Some Garda sources yesterday said it had been suspected for some weeks that this criminal might have a grudge against Mr Meehan snr.