The issue of European peacekeeping had the potential to split the Labour Party conference down the middle. So there was general relief yesterday when delegates agreed the United Nations, not the PfP, should be responsible for keeping Bernie Malone and Proinsias De Rossa apart between now and polling day.
Well, no. Some subjects were just too sensitive to be aired during Labour's first post-merger conference. And although you could cut the tension with a scissors any time the party's Dublin Euro candidates were in the room together, the weekend passed without any major incidents.
Indeed, "mature" was the favourite word among delegates to describe the three-day proceedings, and it was hard to argue. "We're all the same age," said Dublin councillor Mary Frehill, a bit ruefully; while in one of the warm-up speeches on Saturday night, former DL member Liz McManus gave a similar clue as to why the two parties have blended so easily.
She has known her new leader longer then her old leader, she explained - since they studied together in the 1960s, in fact. "And looking around at you all, I'm probably one of the few people who remember Ruairi Quinn when he had hair." It wasn't true: they all remembered Ruairi Quinn when he had hair.
One of the poignant sights at the conference was a table offering free condoms to mark the 30th anniversary of the Irish Family Planning Association - as good a symbol as any of the left wing's influence in shaping modern Ireland. But three decades of activism wears you out, and there weren't many takers.
Still, the party is not too old to want to get up and boogie. And the leader chose this particular metaphor to broach in his address on the delicate subject of PfP and NATO, comparing Fianna Fail to a "shy girl at a country dance" hoping somebody would ask her out. Labour has been doing a bit of a two-step on the issue itself, of course, and some members feared yesterday's debate might develop into an all-out rumba. In the event, a compromise was agreed in which Mr Quinn and Mr De Rossa managed not to tread on each other's toes.
In many ways the star of this alternative Tralee Rose festival was Dick Spring. But this was also the conference in which Ruairi Quinn stamped his authority as leader, opening his address by assuring the party he had never been more excited by the potential of politics.
And he got so excited at one point that - attempting to say that the system which had discredited local government was "back", he nearly used a completely different word starting with "b" instead, to the amusement of both himself and the audience.
