Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My colleague in the English department in TCD, Terence Browne, wrote about "Dancing at Lughnasa": "Their dance is the dance of the misplaced, of proud, gifted, bravely energetic women whose lives were misshapen by an Irish society that will, as it changes, destroy the life they have struggled to achieve". Senator Ó Clochartaigh has referred to the social commentary that runs through these plays, and the search for the fifth province by a man who crossed from Muff to Derry to the Field Day theatre to do his work every day.

His colleague, Seamus Heaney, commented on the cathartic effect of Friel's play on audiences saying:

Their elation comes from the perception of an order beyond themselves which nevertheless seems foreknown, as if something forgotten surfaced for a clear moment. Whatever they knew before that moment becomes renewed, transfigured in another pattern.

We are doing that in the year of commemorations as we think more about the nature of this country and society and the need to expand on traditional interpretations of it. That is echoed in Declan Kiberd's examination of Field Day and its expression here in this House and in the political and social life of Ireland. He said that when Mary Robinson was elected President in 1990 and achieved that expanded definition of Irishness with her candle in the window reaching out to the diaspora, he felt that the artistic agendas of Friel and Heaney had at last found a political embodiment.

The idea of home, emigration, ancestry and exile are rooted in Glenties and Ballybeg. They all come together in the beautiful and dramatic west Donegal landscape. There is a very nice quote from Rosita Boland, quoting from Seamus Heaney speaking about Friel in the Glenties summer school of 2008, The Catechism of Friel -

B was for Ballybeg, “a place where the soul had no hiding place”.

R was for the risk he had taken in first deciding to write full time.

I was for integrity.

A was for Anne, his beloved wife of more than half a century.

And N, Heaney told the packed hotel ballroom, was for “a very important word in the Friel vocabulary: No. No to the cult of self-promotion” – a reference to the fact that Friel did not give interviews.

He is looking down on us today from his heavenly abode and we are saying thank you so much to Brian Friel for all that he has inspired in this country.Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.