Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

He was from Sandymount, Dublin 4. My mother was born and raised on Bath Avenue in Sandymount in Dublin 4 and she was very proud that William Butler Yeats was from her neighbourhood. This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit Yeats country, including Lissadell and Mullaghmore, and I saw some wonderful and beautiful scenery. Although he was of Anglo-Irish descent, William Butler Yeats as a young poet came to think of Sligo, where he spent much of his youth and childhood, as his spiritual home. Its landscape became over time, symbolically, his country of the heart. It was the inspiration for many of his great works. For this reason, a large part of the celebrations will be rooted in Sligo but events will be held nationwide and around the world. There will be events in the National Concert Hall in Dublin and the National Library of Ireland, along with the education programme and the Yeats among Schoolchildren competition.

The Minister mentioned that from this Thursday to Sunday, the Yeats Day festival will take place in various venues throughout Sligo and Ireland, and a programme of activities will be held in over 20 venues in Sligo town and county over the four days. There will be poetry readings by laureates and national poets who have never performed together in Ireland. These include Paula Meehan, Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Liz Lochhead, Aisling Fahey and Sinead Morrissey. As the Minister mentioned, President Michael D. Higgins, patron of Yeats 2015, will attend this event. Other guests include Edna O'Brien, Eimear McBride, Ambassador Dan Mulhall, Keith Hopper and Professor Meg Harper.

William Butler Yeats was also a great patron of the arts. Perhaps Members know that his brother, Jack Yeats, competed for Ireland in the 1924 Olympic Games and won a silver medal for The Liffey Swim, a painting category on sports that was part of the Olympics up to 1948. We know he had a great interest in the arts and politics. One of his greatest works, "September 1913", explores these interests and there is bitterness in the tone of the poem. In response to the Dublin Municipal Corporation refusing to build a gallery for the Hugh Lane collection, he wrote:

What need you, being come to sense

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone.

It is powerful stuff.

Senator Norris has mentioned that in 1904 Yeats founded, along with Lady Gregory, the Abbey Theatre. Our colleague, Senator Mac Conghail, is the current director of that theatre. In 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Mr. Edward Martyn and Mr. George Moore established the Irish Literary Theatre. Yeats declared, "We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory and that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed". What a noble aspiration.

In 1922, Yeats was appointed a Senator in the first Irish Seanad and he was reappointed for a second term in 1925. In a speech during a debate on divorce all those years ago that was regarded was one of his supreme public moments, he said: "It seems to us a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who hate each other to live together and it is to us no remedy to permit them to part if neither can remarry." In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; he was chosen that year for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic forum gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation. It was after he received the prize that his best work emerged.

I congratulate the Senator on the hard work put into this, and that knowledge, experience and passion has been invaluable. I commend the Minister and the Department on highlighting the importance of this year's celebration, as well as providing the funding to go towards costs.