Retired Dutch industrialist Dr Tiede Herrema, now 84, spoke caringly yesterday about the fate of the two people who had kidnapped him and had been given long jail sentences.
Dr Herrema declined to elaborate on details of his meeting with Eddie Gallagher and Marion Coyle, but confirmed that it was a "face-to-face" meeting and that both were "doing well at the moment". It was 30 years ago this month that he was abducted near his Limerick home.
The former managing director of the Ferenka factory in Limerick, who now lives in Arnheim in the Netherlands, was the subject of massive international media attention at the time.
Dr Herrema was speaking at the University of Limerick where he donated his private archive of documents relating to his dramatic abduction to the Special Collections Library.
Guests at yesterday's ceremony in UL included former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, former Garda commissioner Larry Wren and Dutch ambassador Robert Serry. Dr Herrema, who was joined yesterday by his wife Elizabeth, said he feared for his life many times during the 36-day kidnap ordeal.
He added that he had drawn on his background in human psychology and tried very hard to open up a channel of communication with Gallagher while he was held hostage in a house in Monasterevin, Co Kildare.
"If you are with people in a certain situation, it's very important to build a relationship, and I knew that from my background. I started to talk to Eddie Gallagher and I made some agreements with him."
Dr Herrema has often spoken compassionately about Gallagher and Coyle, who were jailed for 20 years and 15 years respectively for their roles in the kidnap saga which captured the imagination of the nation in the mid-1970s.
He said yesterday that he still believed the renegade IRA pair had received excessive jail terms.
Dr Herrema, who is still a regular visitor to Ireland, said he felt it appropriate to donate the documents to the University of Limerick because he wanted to leave a legacy for his children in his advancing years.