Together with his family, he lived at Browningstown Park on the Douglas Road and Ringmahon House on the Mahon peninsula.
[6] On the morning of Friday 16 October 1981, Dunne was on his way to open a new supermarket in Portadown, County Armagh when he was kidnapped by the IRA.
He was released unharmed in a graveyard in Cullyhanna, County Armagh after his friend and fellow businessman, Patrick Gallagher, paid his £1 million ransom.
[citation needed] Dunne was again embroiled in scandal in the mid-1990s when it emerged he had given large amounts of money to a number of Irish politicians, mainly from the Fianna Fáil party including the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey.
[18] He personally promoted the gyms on radio, using recent Irish advertising legislation which allows direct comparisons to named competitors.
Dunne was working on a new health club, to open in Dún Laoghaire in Dublin, but abandoned the project due to complaints from local residents.
Instead, in February 2008, his company Barkisland Developments Limited submitted a planning application to the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames Council for change of use of the sports ground to a cemetery.
Following its soft opening, the new website was affected by glitches and was unable to handle sufficient traffic without going down.