Richard J. Hayes

Who is Richard J. Hayes?

Richard James Hayes was a code-breaker during World War II, and was Director of the National Library of Ireland.

Hayes was born in Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick in 1902 and was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College Dublin.

Members of MI5 believed "his gifts amounted almost to genius". The BBC producer who researched Hayes's life calls him "a Colossus of a man – Ireland's greatest unsung hero". One of the most notorious German spies interned in Ireland during the war, Günther Schutz, described him as "absolutely brilliant".

As far as Schutz and the other German spies whose cells he entered during the Emergency knew, their quiet-spoken and polite interrogator was "Captain Grey", a mysterious military figure always accompanied by another intelligence officer.

Only a handful of people in G2 military intelligence, knew that "Captain Grey", one of the most important and prolific code-breakers of the second World War, was not a military man at all.