Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I also express my sympathy to Ita and her five children on John's sad passing, to her son, John, and her daughters, Claire, Siobhán, Lucy and Maria, to his brothers, sisters and grandchildren and to his nephew, Senator Diarmuid Wilson. I first got to know John Wilson before I entered this House in 1974, when he was president of the Trinity College Fianna Fáil cumann. He took a keen interest in young people and in encouraging them into politics. He was almost a father figure to the students who belonged to that cumann and was the first person to bring some of us to visit Leinster House, some time in 1974 or 1975. He inspired many of us back then as a man of enormous intellect but he was also a very compassionate man. John Wilson was a republican and was very proud of his roots in Cavan but he was also a constitutional politician and was never ambivalent nor wavered in his view that constitutional politics were the only way forward on this island. He was, as others have said, a great scholar, a linguist and a man who had a particular interest in Greek and Latin. My predecessor as leader of my party, Mr. Michael McDowell, was one of his former students who used to speak fondly of all he learned from John Wilson. When I mentioned that fact to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, he suggested that Mr. McDowell had maybe not learned quite enough.

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