Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am privileged to be able to join in this tribute to Seamus Heaney. I pass on my sympathies and commiseration to Marie and all his family. I pay tribute to the Government for facilitating these statements. It is a great thing to spend a little time thinking about poetry and writing in the Parliament. We would do well if, before we came in to start our political day, we read the lines of From the Republic of Conscience that the Minister read out earlier. I was planning to read them out myself.

However, they bear repeating when he suggests:

At their inauguration, public leaders

must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep

to atone for their presumption to hold office -

and to affirm their faith that all life sprang

from salt in tears which the sky-god wept

after he dreamt his solitude was endless.

While that is the best put-down of political cynicism I have ever heard, it also is an appeal to be the best and for politics to be what it should be-----

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