Patrick Rocca, ‘Poster Boy’ of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger, Kills Himself
January 21st, 2009Via: Times Online:
Patrick Rocca seemed to have it all. A poster boy for Ireland’s Celtic tiger economy, he lent Bill Clinton his helicopter whenever he was in Ireland for a round of golf and rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair at gala dinners.
He played tennis with Sir Alan Sugar in Marbella and ran a property empire that spanned the Irish Sea.
With a glamorous wife, three young children and a sister who is the partner of Van Morrison, the musician, he seemed to embody the shiny world into which Ireland transformed itself after decades on the periphery of Europe.
Yet on Monday morning neighbours noted something was not right when he was seen wandering outside his luxury home in his pyjamas. A little while later he shot himself in the head while his wife Annette was out on the school run.
His suicide, prompted by the prospect of financial ruin according to unnamed friends speaking to Irish newspapers, sent shockwaves through the beau monde of Dublin’s wealthy cocktail society, like a bell tolling the end of the heady days of Ireland’s rampant consumerism and ostentatious exuberance.
Mr Rocca, 41, died from a single gunshot to his head at the family home in Holmeleigh, an exclusive residential enclave on the edge of Dublin’s Castleknock Golf and Country Club. His end was as swift and dramatic as the reversal of fortunes for some Irish banks, including Anglo Irish, which the Government is nationalising and in which Mr Rocca was said to be heavily invested.
Research Credit: V
