Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Marie, distinguished poets and guests, I am deeply honoured to have a few moments to say just a few things. I am honoured also to be among my colleagues and to have heard what everyone has contributed so far. I am sorry I forgot to mention the Minister.

I always considered Seamus Heaney to be a man of great courage. He dared to be different. That he came out of his background and yet had remained so connected with it, is an incredible power. My image of Seamus is always with his feet solidly imbedded in the soil and yet to have navigated the world from that point was an incredible gift. Just to quote from his poem Digging:

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

He did dig with it. Through his poetry he made our ordinary world really extraordinary. He was as Senator Marie Louse O'Donnell said a diviner of words that gave us a sense that we were all great in our existence, an existence we often thought was completely miserable. When I look at his poem Digging and lines such as:

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

I remember doing that with my father. I did not think there was anything great in that. Or the following lines:

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper.

I did that too. Through his words he made us realise that we value this - that this is life and it is our life and it is worth valuing.

When I think of all the trials and tribulations the Minister has had with the boglands, perhaps Seamus would have been the key negotiator he needed on his side so many times to make ends meet, so to speak. I hope that will come to a conclusion one of these days.