It was a March day in 1992 - Charles Haughey was no longer in office - when I got an invitation from the former Taoiseach to join him on Inishvickillaune for an event that had nothing to do with politics. The photographer also invited was Colman Doyle, of the Irish Press. I had thought it was agreed with Mr Haughey that an Irish Times photographer should be present to record the great event.
I wanted to be there yet Mr Haughey had made it quite clear on the telephone that it mattered little to him whether I turned up. The ex-Taoiseach left me in no doubt about his feelings towards The Irish Times. But we had - between difficult news conferences in Cork - discussed his private plans for a great conservation project. "Come if you like, Colman Doyle will be doing the pics," he said.
That, more or less, was the message. And the animosity which sometimes arose at Cork news conferences was only a shadow, as Mr Haughey saw it, of the approach by The Irish Times to his leadership. Simply put, he did not like the style of this newspaper.
However, he was interested in his particular project. It was one that interested me greatly then, as it does now, and I applaud his role in it.
The island is the former Taoiseach's holiday home when he is not on his boat, the Celtic Mist, during his summer break. These days, the boat and the island are places to which he can retreat from more pressing, not to say embarrassing, matters.
On that day on Inishvickillaune, Mr Haughey embarked on a project which was dear to his heart - and one which some experts said could not be brought to fruition. It was a marvellous occasion.
His plan was to reintroduce a vanished species - the sea eagle - to the south-west coast. These majestic birds - mainly fish eaters - were shot and poisoned to extinction at the end of the last century.
Farmers believed the eagles could carry off lambs and that they posed a real danger. Conservation was hardly a popular term then and, despite the fact that a native species was being wiped out, the slaughter continued. By the turn of the century, the sea eagle had disappeared.
Mr Haughey's dream was to bring a juvenile pair of eagles to his island - one of the Blaskets - and to see if the birds would breed in what he thought would be ideal conditions.
Plans were made; the Berlin Raptor Centre was consulted and the Irish Wildbird Conservancy, as it then was, was called in. The potential breeding pair - Maeve and Ailill - was brought from Germany and quarantined at the Fota Island Wildlife Park in Co Cork.
And then came the day for their release. Before that, a German expert from the Berlin centre had gone to Inishvickillaune to prepare the birds - bred in captivity - for their new life.
Initially, they were tethered on long lines to perches and enticed to the handler by rewards of food. At the sight of the reward, they would spread their gigantic wings and fly to the handler's gauntlet. After some final trial runs on the big day, the plan was to cut the tethers and allow the birds to fly free.
Shortly before lunch in the Haughey holiday home, the moment arrived. The eagles again came to the gauntlets, but this time they were untethered. Maeve and Ailill took the bait and took off. On their own, they soared over the islands and were gone.
They had been fitted with transmitters so land-based observers could monitor their movements. In the ensuing days, the radio signals showed their range and told those listening that the birds were still alive. But it wasn't long before the male's call sign went silent. There were no more signals.
One day, not long after, while golfing in Tralee, the famed Kerry footballer/manager, Mick O'Dwyer, came across the body of a dead eagle.
The theory goes that the young bird died of exhaustion, unable to deal with freedom. After this, the signals from Maeve also disappeared and the consensus was that a bold experiment had failed. Mr Haughey was somewhat crestfallen but determined to start again.
But that wasn't the end of it. Gathering for their evening meal on the island last year, members of the Haughey family suddenly witnessed what they had believed was impossible. From nowhere, Maeve glided in over the headland on Inishvickillaune.
There have been other sightings. As recently as last week, she was seen perched on the rocks along the craggy island coastline. Maeve looked hale and hearty - she had overcome her surroundings and had become self-sufficient.
When the pair first flew to freedom, ravens and black-backed gulls gave them a hard time. These birds had come to dominate the Blaskets after the eagles died out and were not taking kindly to the threat of the bigger predators. However, Maeve had staked her claim and, once again, a sea eagle saw one of the Blaskets as its home.
So what now?
Mr Haughey is keen to find a mate for Maeve. That may happen. There is also a slim chance that a sea eagle will drift down from the Scottish islands - where they have been successfully reintroduced - and decide to stay.
The point, however, is that the 1992 experiment has been 50 per cent successful. On such matters, the experts often give reasons why things shouldn't work yet nature takes its own course. This is one such example. There is no reason now to believe that, within a few years, these beautiful birds can't be breeding again along the south west-coast. That would be something.