CORNELIUS RIORDAN:CORNELIUS RIORDAN, the former Cork city coroner, who has died at the age of 80, presided over one of the most dramatic and horrific inquests ever held in Ireland - the Air India disaster that claimed the lives of 329 people in 1985.
Regarded as a sensitive and kindly coroner, Con, as he was widely known, was especially noted as being a source of consolation to grieving relatives at vulnerable times in their lives.
He was particularly supportive of family members, nurses, public health officials and others who had to go through the difficult process of giving and hearing evidence in the course of an inquest.
In a career that spanned more than two decades, he was one of the busiest coroners in the country, holding on average 150 inquests a year, including several cases that made national and international headlines.
Besides the postmortem investigation to determine what happened to the victims of the Air India disaster, he probed the Swansea-Cork ferry tragedy in which two children died when the air in their cabins was poisoned by gas. He also presided over the inquest into the deaths of six Japanese fishermen, gassed when the refrigeration unit of their trawler developed a leak. Having dealt with a growing number of criminal deaths, he was scathingly critical of the godfathers who control Ireland's drugs trade.
A nephew of the former Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr Cornelius Lucey, he acted as the bishop's solicitor in a successful legal practice built up after leaving Maynooth where he had been a clerical student.
He went to school at Presentation College and Farranferris College and studied law at UCC. Though reserved and unassuming, he had a quirky sense of humour and was a polymath with a deep knowledge of a rich tapestry of subjects.
As coroner, he never shirked from confronting difficult issues, a characteristic witnessed during the Air India inquest when the world media converged on the courthouse in Cork.
Despite strenuous efforts by a Canadian government lawyer to avert any suggestion a terrorist bomb might have destroyed the aircraft, the coroner persisted in seeking to throw light on the tragic events of Sunday morning, June 23rd, 1985, when the aircraft from Montreal to London Heathrow exploded off Ireland's south coast with the loss of 307 passengers and 22 crew members.
After hearing five days of testimony, he brushed aside claims that he had no facts to go on.
"I had the fact that it is almost certain . . . I think there is sufficient evidence there to be very suggestive that there was a major violent issue up there, near the nerve centre of the plane, a violent incident which put the nerve centre completely out of order, rendering the pilot and co-pilot incapable." Later, outside the legal confines of the coroner's court, he told an Indian journalist that "only a bomb explains everything".
On his retirement in 1997, he described the Air India inquest as the "most traumatic" of his career. "It was pathetic to see little children and infants in particular taken away in the flower of their childhood. That was a terrible experience for those involved in the aftermath of the disaster."
Hitting out at the "social evil" of drugs, he accused drug barons of deliberately ruining families in their reckless pursuit of money. "These people are dealing in human life, trading in human misery and family anguish."
A sharp critic of the way the coroner's court was run, he described as "haphazard and unacceptable" the method of selecting jurors for inquests. He called for the system to be abolished unless a panel for selecting jurors was introduced.
After stepping down as city coroner at the age of 70 he maintained his legal practice.
Mr Riordan is survived by his daughters Mary, Nóirín and Ina, and his son Vincent.
Cornelius Riordan: born November 14th, 1927; died July 29th, 2008.