This weekend, the august Sunday Times reported on Sen. Christopher Dodd’s Irish “cottage”:

John Moore, an Irish business partner of Downe’s, also lobbied Galway county council to approve a planning application by Dodd to extend and renovate the property soon after it was bought in 1994.

Moore said: I didn’t write to the council on behalf of Edward Downe. I was involved with Galway Chamber of Commerce at the time and had got to know Senator Dodd. I asked the council to look favourably on his planning application because I thought he might be able to help attract US businesses to Galway.

Who paid for the renovations? How much did they cost? Did Dodd and his partner who bought two-thirds of the “cottage,” William “Bucky” Kessinger, split them? Oddly, the renovation costs aren’t mentioned in the lengthy examination of the Irish deal that ran in the Hartford Courant.

In that same Courant article, Dodd says of his partner in the purchase:

The purchase price for the three-bedroom cottage was $160,000, records show. Dodd said that he contributed $12,000 toward the down payment and that he owned one-third of the cottage, while Kessinger owned two-thirds. Dodd said he brought Kessinger on board in part because, financially, “it would have been tight” to purchase it solo. But he said he did not remember why he and Kessinger did not split the purchase fifty-fifty.

Dodd said Kessinger had visited Ireland several times and had long believed that owning property in the country would be a good investment. “We thought that we would use it occasionally, let family and friends use it and then rent it out,” Dodd said.

Did Kessinger use the cottage occasionally, or let his family and friends use it?

Hat tip to InstaPundit, twice, for the links.