Denis Joseph (DJ) Carey is a GAA sporting legend who won numerous All-Ireland, Leinster and National Hurling League medals when he played for his native Kilkenny’s senior hurling team between 1989 and 2005.
The 54-year-old has won nine All-Star Awards, was named Texaco Hurler of the Year on two occasions, and was All-Star Hurler of the Year once during a career that was marked by unprecedented levels of public interest.
His fame as a GAA player coincided with a growth in media coverage of Gaelic games and greater commercial opportunities for top players.
Sometimes referred to as the game’s first superstar, Carey came from a family steeped in sport, with his granduncle, Paddy Phelan, having won four All-Ireland medals with Kilkenny; his aunt, Peggy Carey, four All-Ireland medals with the Kilkenny camogie team; and his brother, Martin, having been a substitute goalkeeper with the Kilkenny team.
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His sister, Catriona Carey, played hockey for Ireland and was a member of the Kilkenny camogie team.
Carey’s career with the senior county team began before he left school and he has spent all his adult life in the glare of the media, with his skills on the hurling pitch making him a regular feature on not just sports pages but also generating news, features and gossip column coverage.
His ambitions were not confined to the sporting arena and in 1994, when still in his early 20s, he set up a company called DJ Carey Enterprises Ltd, which was involved in supplying hygiene products to the hospitality sector. He subsequently set up other businesses, all of which eventually failed.
His high profile attracted sponsorship offers, and he was a founder member of the Gaelic Players Association, which sought, among other matters, to expand the monetary attractions for leading players of being involved in the amateur sport.
The directors of DJ Carey Enterprises included Carey’s wife, Christine, with whom he had two children. Carey’s sister Catriona became a director of DJ Carey Enterprises, replacing Christine in 2001. In 2003 it emerged that Carey’s relationship with his wife had broken down, and that they were separated.
It was unusual that the marital difficulties of a GAA player would make national news, but there was huge media coverage of the couple’s break-up.
The following year, 2004, Carey gave an interview to the RTÉ Guide where he spoke about his relationship with his new partner, Sarah Newman, with whom he was to front an episode of the RTÉ travel show, No Frontiers.
British-born Newman was an entrepreneur and media personality who was later reported to have made €30 million when she sold her start-up, needaroom.com, in 2006. In 2009, she replaced Catriona Carey as a director of DJ Carey Enterprises Ltd.
The couple had a home in Monkstown, Dublin, and houses in the K Club and Mount Juliet in Co Kildare. When the property crash came, they got into financial difficulties, with property debts and guarantees with AIB leading to their being brought to the Commercial Court in relation to a debt of more than €9 million.
In 2016 Newman, who was being pursued through the Dublin courts by AIB, was declared bankrupt in England. In 2017, representatives of the then majority State-owned bank were brought before a Dáil committee after it emerged it had written off almost all of the debt it was owed by Carey after it had sold off the associated mortgaged properties.
In 2023, when he appeared before Blanchardstown District Court to be charged with deception and forgery arising from an alleged scam involving bogus claims that he needed money to fund treatment for cancer, the judge in the case observed that the sporting legend appeared to have “no income whatsoever”.
Carey was granted legal aid to help him deal with the 21 fraud offences he was facing. Those defrauded included billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien and former Clare hurler Tony Griffin.
O’Brien, according to the charges, was dishonestly induced into giving money to Carey on unknown dates between 2014 and 2022 and Griffin in 2022. Others also defrauded involved payments made between the years 2019 and 2022.
At a brief appearance in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday, Carey pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges, with most of the others set to be taken into account when his sentencing hearing takes place in October.
He was allowed continuing bail, and his sentencing hearing is scheduled to consider reports about his mental health problems and what the court was told were “genuine” medical issues. He underwent heart surgery last year and is receiving ongoing care.
