Two years ago Dr Paddy Leahy told The Irish Times that if he got cancer "what I would do is quietly finish up my affairs. I would go to the Far East - I go there about once a year anyway. I would write a few letters. And then I would take my tablets. It might be lonely but I wouldn't have to cry and die every time my children or my friends come in to see me."
Early this month Vincent Browne asked him, following a programme on the right to die, whether he believed he himself would ultimately seek euthanasia.
In the presence of other studio guests he revealed that he intended to go to Thailand - his "second home" - that weekend and to end his own life there in January. This, he said, was because of a cancer of the bladder which had been operated on but which had returned. Before he left for Thailand, he spoke to The Irish Times for four hours and gave an interview to Mr Browne.
He based his belief in euthanasia, and in his declared right to apply this to himself, on the grounds that people's lives are not owned by anybody else, he told The Irish Times.
"It's a philosophical question. I will fight like a tiger to give every human being in this world the same rights I take for myself." This included the right "to live my life my own way - but I don't infringe on the rights of others - after that I can be as eccentric as I like . . . my life is mine. It doesn't belong to Bertie Ahern or any theologian or anybody else and dying is part of your living."
He spoke of a man in a very advanced stage of cancer who was "in and out of hospital" for treatment for massive haemorrhages and who was suffering "excruciating" pain. The man's wife contacted him and he visited the family and gave the man morphine tablets to take.
"I said goodbye to him and came back and in the morning at a quarter to six his wife rang me to tell me he'd taken the lot. Now, Jesus, if that isn't good medicine . . ."
He also spoke of helping people to die who were about to become incontinent and, in their eyes, bereft of dignity. He had never developed a professional detachment to pain, he said.
Dr Leahy has been a controversial figure for decades. When he worked in the Ballyfermot Health Centre he declared that he was prescribing contraceptives for patients. That statement in the 1970s was as startling as his revelation two years ago that, many years previously, he had helped a friend to die - a revelation which, he said, brought many calls from others seeking such help.
Asked about his state of health, Dr Leahy said: "My health at the moment is fine - I have a painful hip but not that bad. It's a major inconvenience but I have a bladder condition as well which was operated on a few years ago."
The cancer of the bladder had returned and would require further major surgery, he said.
He intends to do nothing before January, he said. His intended move to end his life in Thailand was known to some relatives and friends.
"Death holds no terror for me," he told The Irish Times, "but the dying is difficult, saying goodbye, I was never any good at it."