Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank her for the speech and the investment being put into the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats. When Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize, he quoted from the Yeats speech of 1923, when he stated: "I consider this honour has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature. It is part of Europe's welcome to the Irish Free State." Yeats was not famous for modesty but it is interesting that he saw that as an honour for the country. He mentioned, in particular, his friends in saying, "Think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends". He had in mind Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, who inspired him so much in his theatrical interests. It is interesting that Heaney continued that reference and chose pretty much the same themes when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same building and the same podium in 1995.

Senator O'Keeffe knows much about this. The honour for Yeats is that an entire county has called itself after him. In the 1950s recession, those who founded the Yeats school in Sligo and drew such scholars, including Helen Vendler and Seamus Heaney, whose Nobel Prize saw its genesis there, were remarkable in their vision for the commemoration of this poet. They were Frank Wynne, Canon Tom Wood, Fr. Tom Moran and T.R. Henn, a native of Sligo and one of the first directors of the school. It is interesting that in the summer there will be a reunion of the famous directors of the Yeats school, as the scholarship has gone worldwide, linking with Japanese Noh plays and extensively through the best universities in North America and the UK. It is a remarkable achievement of scholarship, so well commemorated by the people who inherited and cherished the landscape which inspired Yeats in Sligo. Thanks is due to volunteers like Jim McGarry and the others I mentioned. John and Michael Keohane had a wonderful library of Yeats books in their bookshop but, alas, it was a victim of what may be termed the "supermarketisation" of traditional book stores. That is a pity, as we need places where younger people can be inspired by the poet.

Yeats wrote to Ezra Pound, as recorded by David Fitzpatrick, about what it was like to be a Senator. He warned Pound not to take up a seat in the Senate in the unlikely event it would happen. He indicated that meetings are dominated by old lawyers, old bankers and old businessmen. Senator O'Keeffe and I share the problem of trying to figure out what bankers were up to in Ireland and we recognise how William Butler Yeats felt about them. The banks in Sligo did endow the Yeats Society building, which is a fine headquarters and a great centre of scholarship, with lateral links with Sligo's institute of technology and St. Angela's College.Also, Yeats did some service to the State in the area of banking by helping to design the currency, as Senator Norris mentioned.

We need a society that cultivates the type of creativity that Yeats sought, especially in this House. He spoke against censorship and the then rules on contraception, as well as on divorce, partition, prison conditions and public safety. He was concerned in the early days of the State, as the Irish Boundary Commission came to its unsatisfactory but probably inevitable conclusion, that we were setting up barriers between North and South. He did not expect to see a united Ireland in his lifetime, but he hoped that we would always be open-minded enough not to set up barriers between the two parts of Ireland. He said in the Seanad, "we are assembled here no longer in a Nationalist or Unionist sense, but merely as Members of the Seanad". It is to the credit of W.T. Cosgrave, first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, that he nominated him to be a member of this House with those noble goals in mind.

One thinks of the great phrases such as "peace comes dropping slow". Seamus Heaney was at the end of the peace process and Yeats got his Nobel Prize at the end of the Civil War: "Was it for this the wild geese spread/ The grey wing on every tide". We must always try to make this country a better place. That is why we are here, and few people inspire us as much as W.B. Yeats. I am delighted the Government is honouring him and I thank the Minister for her presence tonight. I also echo the thanks to Senator O'Keeffe for the work she and her friends in Sligo have done to keep the name of a great poet alive and constantly growing. Each year at the end of July and the beginning of August, scholars go to Drumcliffe and see where his ancestor was the rector. It is a wonderful part of an Irish contribution to a worldwide culture and I am delighted this House is honouring it.