Hugh Coveney

An excerpt of material found in a post Politics.ie Forum
Sunday April 8th 2007

""HUGH Coveney concluded his business chat with publican Denis Quinn - the last man to see him alive - and went for his usual walk with his dogs at Robert's Cove in Cork.

It was shortly after 11am on Saturday March 14, 1998, six months after the Moriarty tribunal was set up, and just five months after Flood was established. It's unlikely these matters were on the mind of the 62-year-old former Fine Gael minister as he negotiated the familiar sheer cliff edge he had walked so many times before.

Eight hours later, when her husband had failed to return for a scheduled dinner party with friends, his wife Pauline raised the alarm. Some time later his body was found. His loyal Scottish terrier, Sasha, had remained below the cliff site, where Mr Coveney is believed to have fallen. By torchlight, they had found the dog barking near the base of Robert's Head.

"She was in a very distressed condition," it was later reported.

The previous day the gentleman politician had changed his last will and testament - a curiously timed act which, when it was revealed, led to speculation that the politician of a merchant prince family had taken his own life.

If the tribunals were not on his mind, then maybe, it was speculated, his imminent unmasking as the holder of a notorious Ansbacher account might have been. Or was he perhaps still ruminating on his fall from grace just three years earlier?""