Ben Dunne: Businessman, media personality, industry disruptor

Ben Dunne leaving the Moriarty Tribunal in May 2000.

Ben Dunne — businessman, media personality, industry disruptor — has died in Dubai, aged 74. 

Survived by his wife Mary and four children, his passing marks the sudden end of a remarkable life, one that played out in equal parts parable, soap opera, and Greek tragedy. How else to describe an innings that involved a kidnapping at the hands of the IRA, an irreversible family fracture precipitated by a vice case, and his almost perpetual personal reinvention? He died while on holiday with his family in Dubai and his death marks the end of a colourful and intriguing life lived mostly in the spotlight in the small fishbowl of Irish public life.