President Michael D Higgins has led the tributes to the author Maeve Binchy, who has died following a short illness.
President Higgins said: "I am deeply saddened to learn that Maeve Binchy has died. She was an outstanding novelist, short story writer and columnist, who engaged millions of people all around the world with her fluent and accessible style. She was a great storyteller and we enjoyed her capacity to engage, entertain and surprise us.
"For others, particularly young and aspiring writers, she was not only a source of great encouragement; but also to so many, of practical assistance.
"In recent years she showed great courage and thankfully never lost her self-deprecating humour, honesty and remarkable integrity as an artist and human being.
"On behalf of Sabina and myself I extend deepest sympathy to Gordon, her family and friends."
An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, said: "Today we have lost a national treasure. Across Ireland and the world people are mourning and celebrating Maeve Binchy. She is a huge loss wherever stories of love, hope, generosity and possibility are read and cherished.
"Today as a nation we are thankful for and proud of the writer and the woman Maeve Binchy.
"I offer my deepest sympathies on behalf of the Government and the Irish people to her husband Gordon Snell and extended family."
Director-General of RTÉ, Noel Curran, said: "Maeve's contribution to the world of Irish writing is incomparable.
"She was one of Ireland's most popular writers for a reason. She wrote about this country as she saw it – the tensions between our past and our present, our rural and urban ways.
"She worked with RTÉ on a range of television and radio programmes as well as sharing her own thoughts and observations on Irish life with presenters such as Gay Byrne, Marian Finucane and John Murray.
"She was a warm and honest writer, with a sharp and intelligent wit, and she was a warm and honest person too. She will be deeply missed."
Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said the life member of the union was "a woman of rare charm, warmth and generosity of spirit".
"Maeve loved people and her unique insight into human nature shone through her journalism and later her novels. She will be missed for her sense of fun, her humour and for the grace and style which were her hallmark," he said.
The film producer, Noel Pearson, said Maeve Binchy was the most generous and the kindest person he had ever met. He said she was someone who was never in bad humour, despite being in great pain in the past few months.
The novelist, Patricia Scanlan, said Maeve Binchy was extremely generous to aspiring writers, and would give them great encouragement and advice.
"Maeve wrote beautiful, warm, big-hearted books full of compassion and understanding," she said.
"The greatness about Maeve was that she had empathy, and any reader who read her understood perfectly where she was coming from because she touched the lives and the hearts of people, and she was a massive inspiration to all of us."
The Scottish writer, Ian Rankin, said Maeve Binchy had time for everybody because her stories came from all of us and were for all of us.
You can watch RTÉ One's The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne featuring Maeve Binchy which was first shown on 3 May, 2009 here.
As a tribute, RTÉ One will repeat the documentary, Maeve Binchy - At Home in the World at 10.05pm tonight, Tuesday July 31.
