O’Grady (80), who tried to dodge a photographer by hiding behind a lamppost outside the Courts of Criminal Justice, had arrived at court with his bags packed.
He is due to serve a one-year sentence in Portugal for having 9,000 images and 29 videos of child sexual abuse.
Ironically, he was extradited from Portugal to face the same type of charge in Ireland in 2019.
His claim in the High Court this week that apples had been thrown at him while in prison there makes prison unsafe for him was thrown out.
In the meantime, O’Grady, who has an address in Dublin city, remains on bail after his extradition was ordered by the High Court.
History
Last year, he was convicted in a Portuguese court and sentenced to what will be his fifth stint behind bars since being convicted in 1993 of repeatedly molesting two brothers in the United States.
In November 2014, after being freed from a second spell in prison, O’Grady told the Sunday World that he was no longer a danger to children.
“Why would you want to talk to me?” he asked when approached near the property in Waterford city where he was living at the time. When told that it was because of his history of child abuse, he replied: “That’s a long time ago now.”
O’Grady denied that he is still a danger to children, saying: “No, not at all.”
His answer to whether he was in contact with the probation services was: “That would be the normal procedure, yes.”
And asked if people had anything to fear from him he replied, “No, they haven’t. OK?” before walking off into a post office.
Just a year later he was arrested again when a housemate tipped off Gardaí, who found a child sexual abuse video on his laptop.
He was given a 22-month sentence in that case, for which he was brought back from Portugal in October 2019 under a European Arrest Warrant.
O’Grady was previously found guilty of possessing 280,000 sexual images of children and 1,000 videos.
They had been found on a laptop he left on an Aer Lingus flight from Amsterdam in January 2012.
He also got nine months’ prison in 2020 for failure to keep the rules of the sex offenders register by not notifying a change in his details to the authorities.
Documentary
In 1993, O’Grady was convicted in California of lewd acts against children for repeatedly molesting two brothers. He was released after serving seven years in prison before being deported to Ireland in 2001.
His crimes in California were the subject of a 2006 documentary titled Deliver us From Evil, in which O’Grady gave an account of his offending.
The High Court this week found O’Grady’s evidence relating to the trial process to be “disingenuous and self-serving”.
The judge found that O’Grady, who claimed he had been denied the right to a fair trial in Portugal, had tried to control the proceedings.
Mr Justice Patrick McGrath added that O’Grady was “clearly trying to manipulate the system to try to secure a certain outcome”.