BETTY Roche doesn't want money, she wants answers. A young woman jogging in the Phoenix Park told a garda that the body of a man was lying in thick undergrowth near Aras an Uachtarain. The garda told her he would investigate.

Six days later the same woman saw the same body again. By the time Betty's husband Matthew was found, his body was badly decomposed.

The mother of five from Cabra in Dublin wants to know why the garda on duty on December 8th did not accompany the jogger to the scene or why he did not take her name or address so that she could be contacted later.

She has sought legal advice and is threatening to sue the force unless she gets answers to what she believes is a straight forward inquiry.

Earlier this week a coroner's court was told that gardai were carrying out an internal investigation into the actions of the garda on duty at the city gate of the President's residence. The garda was not named in court and did not give evidence.

Ms Roche was told that she would be informed of the outcome when the investigation was concluded. A spokeswoman for the Garda said "the matter had not been finalised" and she did not know when it would be.

It has been over two months since the body of 54 year old Matthew Swan was found, and Betty Roche believes it is time for the Garda to explain what happened so that she and her family can put the tragedy behind them and get on with their lives.

Betty Roche fell in love with a Cliff Richard lookalike almost 20 years ago. They met in a Dublin pub and immediately hit it off. Five foot nine, dark and handsome, Matthew Swan was "the man of my dreams," she says.

"They called him Cliff Richard. He couldn't walk out the door but there would be women after him. He was really handsome when he was young," she recalls.

"He was working at the time as a driver for Batchelors. In the evenings he played handball and was a goalkeeper on the local football team. "He was ambitious then," Betty recalls. "He seemed happy."

He had been married already but his wife Maureen had left him five years earlier and gone to live in England. "They didn't get on. She knew there was something wrong with him and she couldn't take it."

Betty didn't have the same fears. They started going out together and after two years their first child was born. He was named after his father.

The couple moved into Matthew's family home in Cabra and a year later their second son Karl was born. Their third child, Peter, is now 12.

"We got on great. We had family arguments, of course, but just ordinary things. Matthew was a quiet fellow, private, kind of deep and full of pride. He idolised the kids. He was a good father."

For a time they had a normal family life. But when Peter was just two years old, Matthew suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to St Brendan's Hospital. His mother had been a patient there before him. She died on the day Matthew's first child was born.

His greatest fear, says Betty, was that he would suffer the same fate.

"He started getting depression. He lost his job. The tablets boosted him up. When he didn't have them he was completely down. He started overdosing. Once he went up to the attic with a sheet and tried to kill himself."

"He said he was no good to me and the children and he didn't want to live any more. He couldn't see a way out. It was like he was in a tunnel, but there was no end to it."

His relationship with his family began to deteriorate. "The young fellow felt he was making a show of him to others. I used to explain that he was sick, but it was very difficult for the children to understand."

About five years ago he started leaving the house in the middle of the night.

"I would think he was asleep. I would get up and he would be gone, all the doors in the house left open. I'd search the streets for him. The gardai were very helpful then."

As the years went by he began spending less time in the family home and more on the streets. "There came a time when I couldn't handle it any more. I had five children. I couldn't leave them to search for him. I pleaded with him to come home but he wouldn't."

For the last three years Matthew Swan made the People's Garden in the Phoenix Park his home. It was there that his body was found, a few feet away from his bed of black plastic sacks and newspapers.

"There was a lot of hurt, a lot of pain," says Betty. "His life, both our lives, were very sad. The boys don't talk about him any more. They only remember his sickness, and the years of visiting St Brendan's.

"But I know they are heartbroken. For their sake I need to know why he was left there, dead, for six days. I need some answers, so that we can all learn to cope with what has happened and move on."