The Taoiseach has again raised the issue of Ireland's involvement in the Commonwealth. Less than two months after first airing the issue, Mr Ahern yesterday told students at UCD that Ireland had been taken from the Commonwealth "in a particularly clumsy fashion" in 1949. What Eamon de Valera regarded as a potential bridge was pulled down. .
In a lengthy address to the Kevin Barry Cumann at UCD, he also said there was no fundamental reason of principle why Ireland should not be prepared to participate in Partnership for Peace arrangements with NATO "on our own terms".
There was "a strong case that Ireland should be a member of, or at least have an association with, international groups and organisations that share our commitment to the ideals of peace, democracy and human development". "But we do need to co-operate actively with the principal regional organisations involved to maintain peace and security in Europe and further afield, in keeping with our distinctive peacekeeping contribution," Mr Ahern said.
Outlining a situation where, 50 years ago, Ireland stood aloof, the Taoiseach said it had succeeded in cutting itself off from most of its friends in the English-speaking world and showed little interest at first in the EU, until after Mr Sean Lemass became Taoiseach.
The first inter-party government had taken Ireland "in a particularly clumsy fashion" out of the Commonwealth in 1949, just before India joined as a republic.
However, the Commonwealth included many territories and states who won their full independence in modern times while remaining an organisation of which President Nelson Mandela was now the elder statesman.
"What de Valera regarded as a potential bridge was pulled down," Mr Ahern added.
In the 1950s Ireland enjoyed unencumbered sovereignty in all directions with no strategic partnership of any great consequence. The future was never so economically bleak.
"Right up till the time we joined the EC, some reflective senior people, even in our own party, sometimes wondered out loud if we had done the right thing in going for full independence." In the present day, the Government had a responsibility not to inhibit, for purely ideological reasons, Ireland's defence forces from playing their full role under changing conditions.
"The Ireland of the new millennium should, for our own sake, as we gradually succeed in solving most of our own problems, become more active and involved in the world around us, and shed any remaining isolationist instincts or inhibitions," he added.
The Taoiseach said he was "not convinced" that the Irish public is interested in, or persuaded of the benefits of a full-blown traditional Left-Right divide. The American system showed the considerable merit of having a democracy built around two main parties which were quite distinctive but ideologically not too far apart.
In any case, Fianna Fail had, in a practical sense, often been well to the left of the Labour Party "in terms of actually delivering to the poor, the elderly and disadvantaged or in establishing public enterprise".
Meanwhile, nothing resembling Civil War politics had existed for decades. He was prepared to acknowledge the "greatness of Michael Collins", as Fine Gael politicians were prepared to acknowledge the "tremendous achievements of Sean Lemass".
It was also an entirely discredited notion that real Civil War politics, when they did exist, had anything much to do with the North. They had far more to do with bitterness over the events of the Civil War itself.
This, in turn, had been caused by a dispute over the status of the new Irish State - whether it would be a Republic as most people wished or a Dominion owing allegiance to the Crown "as the British insisted and as was reluctantly accepted in the Treaty".
"Once Ireland became a Republic, de facto in 1937 and under international law in 1949, the basis for any further domestic dispute or pursuit of political advantage was gone," he said.
Mr Ahern has said the attack on the North's Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, by the deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr John Taylor, was both unwarranted and unfair.
Speaking in Cork yesterday Mr Ahern said remarks by Mr Taylor last Monday to the effect that Mr Mallon was merely "pretending" to be an honest broker between the UUP and Sinn Fein bore no resemblance to the SDLP deputy leader's track record and his stance over three decades against violence.