Mr Patrick Cooney, a solicitor, was Minister for Justice in the 1973-77 Fine Gael/Labour coalition government.
He was a key figure in that Government's resistance to the growth of the IRA in the early years after the eruption of violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.
As a member of Fine Gael's youth group in the mid-1960s Mr Cooney acquired a reputation as a liberal. Now aged 72, he was elected to Westmeath County Council in 1967 and to the Dáil in a by-election in 1970.
He was appointed party spokesman on Justice in 1972 and opposed the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill that year, saying it was a Bill "the like of which can only be found on the statute books of South Africa".
However as Minister for Justice from 1973 onwards, he took a strong "law and order" approach in response to the growing threat of paramilitary violence, North and South. He continued to operate the Offences Against the State Act and in 1976 increased the penalties under it for membership of illegal organisations.
This was the period when the Garda faced growing allegations of brutality towards para- military suspects and criticisms of the operation of an alleged "heavy gang" given the task of extracting confessions from such suspects.
He lost his Dáil seat along with several ministers from the coalition in 1977 and was subsequently elected to the Seanad.
He regained his Dáil seat in 1981 and though he was not seen as among the liberal wing of the party that backed Dr Garret FitzGerald after he became party leader in 1977, he was appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the short-lived 1981-82 Fine Gael/Labour Coalition.
He was appointed Minister for Defence from 1982 to 1986 and Minister for Education from then until the fall of that Government in 1987. He was elected an MEP in 1989, retiring from the Dáil in that year. He retired as an MEP in 1994.
While he has not had a high public profile in recent years, he defends vigorously actions taken by himself and the Cosgrave-led coalition in response to paramilitary violence.
Following the State's payment of £95,000 to Mr Vincent Browne in settlement of an action over the tapping of his telephone in 1975, Mr Cooney himself took an action on the basis that this settlement implied some wrongdoing on his part. The case was settled, with the Department of Justice stating that Mr Cooney was involved in no wrongdoing in authorising the tapping.