John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

As with all my colleagues, I would like to be associated with the vote of sympathy to Kieran's wife Mary, in addition to his mother, brothers, sisters, daughters, son and grandson. Kieran Phelan could have been nothing other than a gentleman because his mother was a lady. When I rapped on her door in the early 1980s looking for a Seanad vote, she brought me in and made me the cup of tea. Tragically, I did not meet the woman again until the morning Kieran died. We met her then in the hospital and I recalled having been looked after by her almost 30 years earlier in a sympathetic manner.

Seanad candidates, when they travel the country, have some very lonely days, as Senator O'Donovan said. The day on which Kieran's mother made the tea for me was a lonely day because I had trawled Laois and had not found as much as one fish. Senator O'Donovan was lucky in that he at least found two. I did not find any. I was just told I had to report to Paddy Lawlor that night at a meeting, at which I would get five or six in the one go. That night I became a special friend of someone whom the Leader mentioned, Marty Rohan. I nearly killed him that night on a humpback bridge between Abbeyleix and the late Johnny Cooney's. These are the sorts of events that stick in one's mind.

When I was nominated to the Seanad by the Taoiseach, not having been able to get on the industrial and commercial panel through the party - I do not know how that happened but we will leave that until another day - Kieran became a very special friend to me because we had the same interests outside the House. The first question he asked me every Tuesday was what it was worth this week. He was referring to the price of beef and wondered who was paying the most. As the day progressed, he would give a report on the sales he had attended the previous week. Whether Brendan gave him the ones that were cheap, we never knew. However, Kieran always said that Brendan gave him the value.

We lost a perfect gentleman when we lost Kieran Phelan. We lost a friend and colleague and we probably lost the person with the greatest sense of humour among the 60 Members of this House. Kieran had a tremendous sense of humour. I could tell a story in this regard but it would take too long. In that regard, the Cathaoirleach is looking at us with long eyes. One day we were above in the office and we made a telephone call to a certain gentleman. Senators Feeney and Wilson were present. What was happening became so funny that we all had to put down the phones, having wound up the poor individual so far. Kieran turned around and said that if the individual could get his hands on us and knew what we were doing, he would do a job on us. All he did say that day was: "Isn't it great to have a sense of humour and to be able to ring up someone and say you wound him up and that he is now off the hook?"

To Kieran's mother, wife, family and grandson, I say I have no doubt that the CD of today's proceedings will take pride of place not only in his home but also in the homes of all his siblings. It will be there for generations so they will know how we felt about our former colleague. I suppose Kieran is above looking down upon us saying: "They did not say all those things about me when I was with them." No one knows the value of anyone until he is gone.