Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to express my thanks to the Heaney family, Marie, Michael, Christopher and Catherine Ann, for their attendance and presence in the Chamber today. The appreciations have been moving and full and have shown that Seamus Heaney had a wonderful life for which he was very grateful.

He understood his own soul, mind and heart, and he fulfilled his human potential with great generosity in his life. Personally, I felt moved in sharing his funeral farewell in Donnybrook church. Everybody who contributed to that made it a very lovely occasion. Seamus will live on. His appreciation is only in the early stages because his work lives on and is timeless. His life will remain in the mind's eye of everybody who knew him. He was kind, courteous and very human. He has given all of us, as a man, great example in how to live a family life and the life of an individual and to share with others the things he was good at and able to understand and appreciate. What more can I say?

On a practical note, we have moved from appreciation to the hard-nosed stuff. I noticed the interchange between the Minister and the Deputy. It is said that one campaigns in poetry and governs in prose.

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