Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My condolences to Marie, who is very welcome to the House, to Catherine-Ann, Christopher and Michael, who are not here today, and to the grandchildren as well as the other speakers. His gifts will go on through them. Many people have said he was the most significant Irish poet of his generation. He was described by fellow poet, Robert Lowell, as the most important Irish poet since Yeats, no small statement, and, indeed, he was.

His life has been celebrated throughout Ireland during his life and since is death by all the print media, national media and every type of media. He was given a front-page dedication in the New York Times.

It is fitting that we in Seanad Éireann use our final opportunity for statements before the vote - I am referring to before the vote, not the final statements in Seanad Éireann - to pay tribute to a great man, a great family man and a great people's poet.

In his final farewell he brought together people from all walks of life, old friends and new friends, fellow poets and wordsmiths, heads of state and government, politicians, diplomats, rock stars, actors, those who had met him, those who had not met him and those who wanted to pay tribute and be associated with him on his final day. They came to show their respect and admiration for him and his family. I read something in the newsprint following his funeral, the words of a taxi driver, who said to a journalist that it was a sad day for us all and that he was an extraordinary ordinary man.

Before coming in, I spoke briefly to Marie and she spoke of all the letters and cards she had received, not from dignitaries, important people or whoever, but from the ordinary people of Ireland who wrote in extraordinary words. She said they themselves were poets and that their words were valued and appreciated. This again is a tribute to the Heaney family and to Seamus, who was in great demand worldwide but who found so much time for the ordinary people. I attended the Clifden Arts Festival last weekend, at which a loving, moving tribute was paid to him for all of the time and work he had given to the ordinary extraordinary people of Clifden during the many arts festivals held there.

As a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, I note that as a poet from Bellaghy and Northern Ireland who lived in Dublin, Heaney used his work to reflect upon the Troubles, the often-violent political struggles that plagued the country during his young adulthood. He sought to weave the ongoing Irish troubles into a broader historical frame embracing the general human situation in his books Wintering Outof 1973 and Northof 1975. Caithim cúpla focal a rá trí Ghaeilge mar gheall ar a chuid oibre íontach ar an aistriúchan a dhearna sé ar Buile Shuibhne, that is, Sweeney Astray, his great translation of the medieval work, Buile Shuibhne. It concerns an ancient king who, cursed by the church, is transformed into a mad birdman and forced to wander in the harsh and inhospitable countryside. Heaney's translation of that epic medieval work was published in 1984 as Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. As my own maiden name was Sweeney and some might say "Sweeney astray", I have a resonance with that magnificent poem and work of prose by Seamus Heaney. Críochnóidh mé le sin. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.