Ar maidin, is mian liom tagairt a dhéanamh ar eachtra stairiúil a tharla 100 bliain ó shin sa chathair seo ar stáitse Amharclann na Mainistreach i mBaile Átha Cliath. I refer, of course, to the famous riot at the Abbey Theatre in February 1926 on the fourth night of the performance of The Plough and the Stars, Seán O'Casey's play that had been accepted for production. It was very significant because it happened ten years after the Rising. The Rising of 1916 fed very definitely into what transpired on the stage that night.

It was not just the performance and the riot that were of significance but the intervention of one of our forerunners from this House, William Butler Yeats, a Senator from 1922 to 1928. He tried to pour oil on the troubled waters that night, using the famous, oft-quoted remark, "You have disgraced yourselves again", hearkening back to the riots 19 years earlier at John Millington Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World. The kernel of the issue was that the protest was led quite dramatically by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. Many Senators will know that her husband, Francis Sheehy-Sheffington, was a victim of the 1916 Rising. He was shot dead in Portobello Barracks by Captain John Bowen-Colthurst after no trial, even though he was a suffragist and a pacifist and was on the streets of Dublin during the Rising to try to prevail upon the rioting mobs to refrain from looting. He was arrested and, probably in a sort of vindictive action against the suffragist and pacificist movement, realising the time that it was and the Great War, shot dead without trial in the barracks.

Given that whole period of history, there was revulsion in the audience that night to the portrayal of the new Irish Republic, with the Tricolour in the pub and the prostitute on the stage. The message was, "Is this what our heroes gave their lives up for?". We then had Yeats on the other side pleading with people to allow the new Republic to speak and develop its own culture.

I know the Leas-Chathaoirleach chairs the committee that deals with art acquisitions for the House. I am on it too. I ask that when we next meet, we consider ensuring a portrait of William Butler Yeats is hung in these Houses. I am sure one is available somewhere. Not alone would it be of great satisfaction to the Members of the Houses, but it would also be an international tourist draw for people who visit the Houses.