The Princess of Wales made visits to Northern Ireland on nine occasions, the most significant of which was probably the one she made in the aftermath of the IRA's Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh in November 1987. Then she visited the injured and attended the funerals of the victims.
Princess Diana's visits to schools, hospitals and institutions caring for the handicapped in the North were all extremely well received.
On several occasions she travelled quietly to the North to meet British army battalions serving there. As colonel-in-chief of the Princess of Wales Regiment she made a number of visits when its battalions were serving tours of duty in the North. Her last visit to the North two years ago was to meet the regiment's troops.
Her first visit to Northern Ireland as Princess of Wales was in October 1985 to meet the soldiers and open a new wing of the faculty of art and design at the University of Ulster.
Her next visit and the only one made in the company of her husband, Prince Charles, was to visit the people injured in the IRA bomb which killed 11 people at the Cenotaph in Enniskillen in November, 1987.
After meeting the injured and relatives of the dead she kept up a correspondence with a number of them. She returned to Enniskillen in 1993 to attend the remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph.
The death of Princess Diana is the first experience of sudden, violent death experienced by the British royal family since that of Prince Charles's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in an IRA bomb attack in Co Sligo almost 18 years ago to the day.
The IRA also planned to blow up Charles and Diana as they attended a function in the West End of London in the early 1990s, according to an account by a former IRA member, Mr Sean O'Callaghan, which is believed by security sources,
Mr O'Callaghan, who had taken part in IRA attacks in Britain and who was recently released from prison, said the IRA had planned to kill the royal couple at a restaurant but the attack had been called off.
The IRA killed Lord Mountbatten (79) his 15-year-old grandson, Nicholas Brabourne, his friend Paul Maxwell (15) and the Dowager Lady Brabourne (82), with a bomb placed on board Lord Mountbatten's yacht.
The bomb exploded as the yacht sailed out of Mullaghmore harbour in Co Sligo on August 27th, 1979. The same day another IRA landmine attack killed 18 British soldiers outside Warrenpoint, Co Down.
The Federation of Irish Societies issued a statement on behalf of the Irish community in Britain, saying it wished to express the deep sadness and shock which was felt by the community at the tragic and untimely deaths of the Princess of Wales, Mr al-Fayed and the driver of their car.
The federation's chairman, Mr Gearoid O Meachair, said Princess Diana had shown enormous courage and inner strength during her far too short life, showing what further significant international contribution she could make to important humanitarian issues such as homelessness, HIV and landmines.
"Our hearts and prayers are with her children and all the families affected by this horrific and wasteful tragedy."