The President, Mrs Robinson, will today make her final visit to Northern Ireland before she leaves office to take up her new post at the United Nations. She has visited the North in an official capacity 17 times, as well as inviting countless groups from around the North to Aras an Uachtarain. Today she will meet voluntary organisations and representatives of ethnic minorities, in keeping with her statement that her relationship is "not with the political representatives in Northern Ireland, but with communities and individuals who have very much welcomed what I have been doing".
Mrs Robinson's frequent trips to the North have angered certain unionist politicians and her first handshake with the Sinn Fein president in 1993 caused controversy, but there is little doubt that she is widely respected. She has been said by the secretary of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr Jim Wilson, to represent "a more pleasant and acceptable face of Irish nationalism".
In particular, she has gained the respect of women, regardless of background or political affiliations. Mrs Robinson was one of the first to acknowledge the important role women's centres were playing in improving community relations. Before a street party in her honour for last Saturday was cancelled, as a mark of respect to Princess Diana, more than 500 Northern women had signed up to attend.
Ms Margaret Yarr from the Shankill Road was one of them. "Most Protestants didn't see her as coming to the North to put a flag in and stake her claim. She just recognised that people here were part of Ireland as well. I think we saw her as someone extending support rather than making a territorial claim."
Ms Yarr says women respected Mrs Robinson because of the importance she placed on women's groups, "because she wasn't like Mrs Thatcher, who didn't give any recognition to women". This, and her efforts to include even marginalised groups, such as traveller women and lesbian groups, helped her transcend the political divide in the North. "It didn't matter which side of the divide women were from. And you didn't have to be a high-flying woman of status."
Only on one occasion did President Robinson meet a hostile reaction, in the staunchly loyalist Village area of south Belfast. The Windsor Women's Centre had invited her to attend the opening of their new premises last September. A small protest was held outside during the visit, and later the centre was damaged in an arson attack.
Ms May Blood, a Shankill Road community worker, says this incident did not reflect the way she was regarded in the Protestant community. "Women on both sides of the community were very comfortable with her because she spoke their language. I don't know anyone on the Shankill Road who would say different."
She says President Robinson wasn't seen as "somebody from one side of the community" but as someone "who took on women's issues on a broad front, and she was greatly admired for that".
The President's informal approach was also greatly appreciated, especially in the working class communities she often visited. "Mary Robinson swept protocol aside and was very much one of the crowd. There was no real formality. It was always on first name terms and she was always interested in what we were doing."
In the small Catholic enclave of Bawnmore in east Belfast these opinions are shared by Ms Margaret McGuinness of Greencastle Women's Group. Of the 168 households in Bawnmore, one in eight has had a family member killed. Ms McGuinness's father was killed by a plastic bullet in 1981. She says the people in the area generally feel "undervalued".
Mrs Robinson visited the estate last year to launch a development plan drawn up by the women's group. She applauded them saying: "I felt that this was the kind of project that I found to be at the heart of real change in Ireland."
Her visit made the women in the area feel that someone did care about them, says Ms McGuinness. "She was a beautiful woman, very inspirational, but down-to-earth as well. It wasn't as if she was better than you, that you couldn't have spoken to her."