Analysis: "It is now time for parties that moved to the extremes for electoral purposes to move back towards the centre", said Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, yesterday afternoon.
The statement reflects the immediate Dublin response to the Northern Ireland elections. Business must now resume, politics goes on and the search for a deal continues.
The statement could have been written a month ago, or three, and kept on file for release yesterday. For the results produced no surprise that affects Dublin's assessment of the prospects for political progress.
There was surprise and relief that there is still an SDLP, its leader surviving with the help of some unionist tactical voters, Alasdair McDonnell sneaking in in South Belfast through a split unionist vote and Eddie McGrady retaining his seat in South Down.
But in general, the outcome produced what was expected: from nationalist voters an even more dominant Sinn Féin with its armed wing still intact, and a triumphant DUP, the undisputed leader of unionism, insisting there will be no deal until the IRA has gone away with a level of verification far greater than has accompanied previous acts of weapons decommissioning.
Talks will resume in the coming weeks, although quick progress is not expected. Everything now hinges on the speed and comprehensiveness with which the IRA responds to the demand that it finally "go away".
Government sources have no doubt that Gerry Adams's "appeal" to the IRA to do just this was choreographed and would not have happened if he did not know there would be a positive answer.
The efforts of Dublin, and the new British Labour government, will be to ensure that the next IRA move is big enough to answer all doubts over whether it has finally turned its back on paramilitary activity and criminality.
The vague uncertainty over how long Mr Blair will remain in Downing Street also gives some urgency. While nobody believes Gordon Brown would take a different line in relation to the North, Mr Blair's commitment to the issue and his deep knowledge gained in eight years of negotiation are an enormous asset to the process.
Discussions will go on into the summer. Some optimists hope for a move before autumn, others believe that, like everything in Northern Ireland politics, it might drag on.
And even if the IRA comes up with the goods, as it were, there is the DUP to be dealt with. They will demand verification - whether through photographs and cinematography or some other means - before considering any accommodation with Mr Adams.
Peter Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson are seen as the two DUP politicians who in particular stuck their necks out last December and pushed their party closer to a deal with republicans than ever before.
They know how close they came to looking exceptionally foolish and having their reputations within unionism ruined. Had any deal been followed by IRA actions such as the Northern Bank robbery, this is exactly what would have happened.
So the IRA must move, and the DUP must be content, and it must persuade its members that they are content. It seems likely that the Independent Monitoring Commission will play an important role. If we get to that stage, there must then be negotiations over the exact future shape of any new deal.
Here another DUP gripe will emerge. The division of power and of the 10 positions in any restored power-sharing executive will have to be based on the make-up of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The balance of power in that Assembly, elected in autumn 2003 for a four-year term, is more favourable to the SDLP and the UUP than that suggested in this Westminster election.
The DUP is expected to begin making this point very soon, demanding that a new Assembly election be held to reflect the new political reality.
However, the near-whitewash secured by the DUP within the unionist electorate in this election occurred partly because it was run on the British "first-past-the-post" electoral system, which can allocate seats entirely out of proportion to the way in which the electorate actually voted.
A fairer predictor of what an assembly election - which uses the fairer PR system - will be the outcome of the local government elections in the North that will become clear on Monday.
The Government will resist any suggestion that yet another Assembly election take place, and that the proportional d'Hondt system of selecting the members of the executive be run in the existing Assembly.
The DUP will wish to stick to its shopping list of changes in the way the executive works, how executive members relate to each other and to the Assembly, and the freedom of the executive members to carry out their North-South functions.
So the process from here on is unpredictable. But yesterday's election results, despite the virtual destruction of middle-ground unionism, has brought few surprises.
Mr Ahern's call on parties that moved to the extremes to move back to the centre is based on the optimistic view that the outflanking of moderate parties by the extremes is a cyclical process; that once the party on the extreme becomes dominant it becomes attracted by power and starts slowly moving towards the centre and to compromise.
The signs of this have been obvious within Sinn Féin for years. There are clear signs, too, that some within the DUP would be comfortable with power in a power-sharing executive, so long as this can be achieved on terms which any new grouping on their flank cannot denounce as extreme.
And while the Agreement can be seen as a triumph for extremes, it is important to note that many key figures within these "extremes" spent considerable energy before last Christmas attempting to do a deal with each other.