A guard of honour of boys from the Castlebridge Siol Maolúir hurling and football club stood to attention at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Wexford as the remains of Jerome Hynes were brought there last night followed by a large crowd.
Mr Hynes's three young sons, Conor, Feargal, and Robbie, are club members . The boys were accompanied by their mother, Alma, Jerome's mother Carmel, his brother Donal and sisters Garry and Aedhmar. His father, Oliver, died last September.
Also among the chief mourners were Mr Hynes's aunt Ms Phyllis McCormack and her son Michael.
Chief executive of the Wexford Festival Opera, Mr Hynes (45) died suddenly while addressing a gathering at Wexford's Theatre Royal last Sunday night.
"Many this evening will know the public side of Jerome which is well documented," Fr Aodhán Marken told the overflowing congregation. But "my memory is of a man of faith and family, the two things which I believe are his greatest and most successful accolade. . . If truth be told and his biography written, his family was his life."
He continued, "to Conor, Feargal and Robbie we all know you will never forget him, how can you? But one thing I believe he would want is that you give yourselves permission to smile, to laugh, to love and to grow as he did.
"Because what any father wants for his children above all else is to be happy, and while today that might seem a strange things to say, and today you might think you'll never be happy again, but Jerome your dad would want you to be. It would be something he would insist on."
Quoting from Sean O'Casey, Fr Marken concluded: "He was a darlin' man. He was a darlin' man." The first reading at the removal ceremony was read by Paul Hennessy, chairman of the Wexford Festival Opera. Among the huge attendance were Minister for the Arts John O'Donoghue, Minister for State at the Department of the Taoiseach Tom Kitt, chairwoman of the Arts Council Olive Braiden, Eithne and Liam Healy, Noelle Campbell Sharpe, Druid manager Fergal McGrath, director of the Galway Arts Festival Paul Fahy, actors Marie Mullen and Sean McGinley, traditional musician and producer Philip King, casting agent Maureen Hughes, Martin Fahy formerly of the Abbey Theatre, Galway friends Trish Forde, Pádraig Boran, Pat and Eilis Connaughton, and Joe Campbell of St Peter's College, Wexford.