Tony Gregory[a] (5 December 1947 – 2 January 2009) was an Irish independent politician, and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Central constituency from 1982 to 2009.

[7] "Tony recalled in an interview how he and a friend dropped into the Sinn Féin offices in 1963, when he was 16 and asked to join the IRA (Irish Republican Army).

Costello, who was a member of Wicklow County Council, emphasised involvement in local politics and was an opponent of abstentionism.

Gregory left the party after Costello's assassination in 1977,[8] stating in a Hot Press interview, published after his death, that he had "agreed to join on paper, but had never got involved with the political organisation itself".

On his election in February 1982 he immediately achieved national prominence through the "Gregory Deal", which he negotiated with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey.

In return for supporting Haughey as Taoiseach, Gregory was given a commitment of a major cash injection for his inner-city Dublin constituency, an area beset by poverty and neglect.

[12] The written agreement included commitments to nationalise a 27-acre (110,000 m2) site in Dublin Port and Clondalkin Paper Mills.

[8] Although Gregory was reviled in certain quarters for effectively holding a government to ransom, his uncompromising commitment to the poor was widely admired.

Fianna Fáil lost office at the November 1982 general election, and a lot of the promises made in the Gregory Deal were not implemented by the new Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition.

[17] Gregory however believed that the solution to the problem was multi-faceted and worked on a number of policy level efforts across policing, service co-ordination and rehabilitation of addicts.

[18] In 1995 in an article in The Irish Times,[19] he proposed what would be established as the Criminal Assets Bureau, set up in 1996 by Minister of Justice Nora Owen, following the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.

[citation needed] In 1985, he attended a sit-down protest in support of Dublin's street traders with Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke, and future Labour Party TD Joe Costello on Dublin's O'Connell Street; he, Burke and four others were arrested and charged with obstruction and threatening behaviour.