Seamus Heaney received the 1999 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry yesterday evening from the President, Mrs McAleese, in what he described as "very happy and proud moment".
"The Irish Times prize is a benediction and a confirmation," he said.
The President said she was glad the judges did not fall into the trap of seeing the Co Derry-born Nobel Prize winner as having "placed himself in some award-free limbo where further honours were superfluous".
"The best is always that - the best - and acknowledgement of that thrilling, incomparable poet's journey means the Nobel Prize will have to shove over and make room for one of the many more tributes to the master."
The other award winners honoured at a ceremony in the RDS in Dublin were Lorrie Moore (International Fiction Prize), Antonia Logue (Irish Literature Prize: Fiction), Neil Belton (Irish Literature Prize: Non-Fiction) and Mairin Nic Eoin (Irish Literature Prize: Irish Language).
Mrs McAleese praised the award scheme for giving recognition "here in Ireland, to living, working Irish writers . . . It is a very visible and very important way of saying - yes, we have a great literary past but not only that, we also have a great literary present".
A quick scratch on the surface of Ireland's literary history, she said, took us from the illuminated manuscripts of the early Christian period, through the great Gaelic bards like Raftery and O Bruadair, to the philosophies of Berkeley and Burke, the novels of Edgeworth, Moore, Joyce and Banville, the poetry of Yeats, Ledwidge, Hewitt, Kavanagh and Heaney, and the plays of Sheridan, Wilde and Shaw.
"That is only a scratch. It doesn't even make a dent on the surface . . . A legion of names, a wealth of genius. The story of this small island and its love affair with literature has earned us a unique place on the world stage."
She said she particularly welcomed the addition of an Irish language category to the awards, which were launched in 1988 by former president Dr Patrick Hillery. Eight series of prizes have been awarded since.
Mrs McAleese welcomed the choice of Ms Nic Eoin as the first winner in the new category, as it recognised not only her immense contribution to the research of literature in the Irish language but "also reclaims a space in our literary tradition for those women whose work was all too often forgotten and unacknowledged down through the generations".
The chairman of the Irish Language Prize judging panel, Mr Alan Titley, said the winning author had set down "a benchmark for all further ideological study in the Irish language and nobody will be able to write about the Irish, Gaelic tradition without facing the arguments and arguing at least with conclusions that she has drawn in this wonderful study".
Accepting the prize for International Fiction, Lorrie Moore said she felt she was sharing it with the other short-listed authors - Don DeLillo, Roddy Doyle and Alice Munro. Their work "makes my own look like a collection of ditties. But I would like to accept this award in the name of ditties everywhere, especially that ditty that is the American short story".
The short story was, as Frank O'Connor said, the lonely voice, "but it is made much less lonely by recognitions such as this", she said.
In his citation, the chairman of the International Fiction judging panel, Mr Douglas Kennedy, said the winner's short stories "grab your imagination with their searing intelligence and immense stylish control. More importantly, they take you into seemingly small human landscapes where very large, fundamental things are going on."
Reading the book, said Mr Kennedy, made him feel "in the best sense of the word, envious".
Of Mr Belton's book, The Good Listener: Helen Bamber: A Life Against Cruelty, the President said it was "an important reminder of how many lives continue to be devastated by the cruelty of their fellow and sister human beings, and how powerful the simple act of being given back a voice, being listened to, is in restoring human dignity".
The chairwoman of the Irish Literature judging panel, Dr Pat Donlon, said the book dealt - with raw honesty and extraordinary sensitivity - with the "reality and horror of the widespread abuse of human rights throughout the world in our century."
Paying tribute to Antonia Logue, the President said she was "so curious to see where her phenomenal talent is going to take her and her readers next". Announcing Mr Heaney's prize, Dr Donlon said it was "particularly heartbreaking" to choose a winner in his category. This was because "we have in Ireland today so many talented, singular voices in Irish poetry and there were many many fine poets which did not make it on to the shortlist".
She said the volumes which they studied contained a cocktail of human experiences "and like the best cocktails, left this reader at times shaken and frequently stirred."
Introducing the prizes, Ms Caroline Walsh, literary editor of The Irish Times, said they had produced remarkable threads in recent literary history. One of this year's winners, Mr Belton, had edited Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradling, winner of the 1993 Irish Literature non-fiction prize.
She said nothing could be more fitting than a Northern President presenting Mr Heaney with this year's poetry award.
She paid tribute to the generosity of the short-listed authors, 12 of whom attended a public reading at the Irish Film Centre on Tuesday.
The editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady, thanked all those who had helped to develop the award scheme. He gave particular thanks to Mr Gerard Cavanagh and Ms Eleanor Walsh, who act as administrator and co-ordinator, respectively, of the scheme, and Mr Gerry Smyth, managing editor of The Irish Times, whose love of books, writing and literature had inspired those on the editorial side of the organisation to develop the awards.
Mr Brady also thanked Major T.B. McDowell, chairman of the Irish Times Trust Ltd, and Mr Louis O'Neill, the recently retired chief executive and group managing director of The Irish Times Ltd. "No editor could have had a more responsive and enthusiastic support from non-editorial colleagues in the difficult years in which we tried to put this scheme together."
