I am sure many Members will share my sentiments if they saw last night's BBC Northern Ireland's "Spotlight" programme that dealt with the intimidation of Kevin Lunney, a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings. It was very sad. He was abducted, tortured and assaulted. There has been ongoing intimidation of all the directors of Quinn Industrial Holdings. The rule of law must be upheld in that region. I do not like to talk about the Garda or its operations. I am sure many things have been done behind the scenes and under the radar but there is a feeling that perhaps the Garda and the PSNI were not out quickly enough to deal with the threats of intimidation against these directors. Additional gardaí have been deployed and there is a fully armed service unit in the area. I very much welcome that but I hope the Garda and the PSNI have a cross-Border initiative to tackle these serious forms of intimidation. Our thoughts are with Kevin Lunney and all the Quinn directors and their families. Nobody should have to experience such intimidation as they try to do what is right for their community and area in terms of protecting jobs. As a State, we must stand up to this form of intimidation and the rule of law must be upheld.

I concur with what Senator Feighan said about Kevin Lunney. The difficulties in that part of counties Cavan and Fermanagh have been experienced for many years. They did not only start in the past three or four years. They have been going on since 2011. I welcome the additional Garda resources deployed but it is not sufficient to send uniformed new recruits to this area. Specialist gardaí need to be put in place who can man the Border and who, along with their colleagues in the PSNI, can target these people.

The main reason I wish to speak is the death yesterday afternoon of Fr. Des Wilson, to which Senator Conway Walsh referred. He was known to many as a formidable priest, an outstanding mentor and in the words of Fr. Brian D'Arcy "a delightful honest rebel". Fr. Des was dearly loved by the Springhill community and the people of west Belfast whom he served diligently for more than 60 years. There are others in this House and the Lower House who I know will pay tribute to him. To Seanadóir Niall Ó Donnghaile he was a great friend and mentor. To Teachta Adams he was a livflong friend and the priest who married him and his wife Colette. To me, he was my father's first cousin and a man about whom I loved to hear stories. The fact that he and my uncle John studied together in the seminary in Maynooth at the same time gave our family a great source of amusement. They took entirely different roads, one a priest and the other a politician, but they were more alike than unalike.

The Senator is a bit like both.

I note the media and social media have been focused heavily on the death of another giant of a man, Gay Byrne, and rightly so, but I saw a small pocket of coverage dedicated to Fr. Des. The Irish Times referred to him as the peacemaking priest, while on Twitter and Facebook ordinary citizens of west Belfast have talked about the loss of their people's priest. It has been heartwarming to read other people's stories of Fr. Des, from how he helped a widowed mother to get back into education to how he opened dialogue between warring factions in the North. While some might say one of his contributions was more important than the other, I know that Fr. Des never did; he placed equal importance on helping people. I offer my condolences to the people of Springhill; they have lost a real force of nature.

We all share those thoughts.