The two separate leaks of Foreign Affairs reports on Anglo-Irish negotiations and on discussions with and about President-elect McAl eese were disgraceful and irresponsible acts, highly damaging to the interests of the people of this island. I avoid the term "national interest", lest the adjective seem to imply that the interest in question is that of Irish nationalism.
Finding a solution to the Northern Ireland problem acceptable to both sides there has been rendered much more difficult, by prejudicing the capacity of Irish government representatives to inform themselves on the thinking of people in the two communities in the North.
These leaks may also have raised new issues surrounding the scale of intra-government circulation of secret reports on Northern Ireland and the security attaching to them within the cabinet system; the degree of access of advisers other than programme managers to such material; and the subsequent security of private office papers which departing ministers may, in accordance with custom, take with them, not all of which may be lodged in secure archives. But that is another subject.
The use made of these leaked documents was also disreputable and dishonest. For some of them were employed to suggest that Mary McAleese is a supporter of Sinn Fein and thus the IRA. In fact, however, the views she expressed in those interviews were those of someone who was engaged in seeking an end to violence by drawing Sinn Fein into a negotiating process on the precondition that it had to be preceded by a further cessation of violence.
There can, of course, be two quite legitimate views about the desirability of the Sinn Fein vote increasing in the election before the ending of violence last summer. For many people, particularly in this State - but in Northern Ireland also for many in the SDLP - any growth in support for Sinn Fein was and is bound to be seen as sinister.
But for other constitutional nationalists in Northern Ireland it seemed important that those in IRA/Sinn Fein who favoured entering talks be encouraged to do so by an increase in the electoral support for Sinn Fein at that stage. Either view is legitimate.
The other development which complicated the picture was Gerry Adams's personal endorsement of Mary McAleese. It is absurd to blame her for this, but once an active Northern nationalist was a candidate, a Northern nationalist presidential candidate was bound to be vulnerable to this kind of endorsement.
For in his struggle with his hard-liners it is clearly important for Gerry Adams to sustain the "pan-nationalist front" concept, which has suffered a severe battering because of the blatant gulf between Sinn Fein and all other nationalist parties North and South on the consent issue. By endorsing the Northern nationalist Fianna Fail candidate he could hope to provide additional oxygen for this "pan-nationalist" illusion.
As it happened, the Adams endorsement turned out in a perverse way to be helpful to Mary McAleese's campaign. It is true that the query John Bruton raised about the Fianna Fail candidate's reaction to this endorsement evoked a disturbingly ambiguous response from her. But this fact was clouded by Fianna Fail's success in confusing this issue with the abuse of the leaked documents.
As a result, although John Bruton had refused to join in making capital out of the leaked documents, some of the media and much of public opinion came to believe that he had done so. And the confusion thus contrived seems to have swung opinion against Fine Gael and its candidate, Mary Banotti.
The disreputable character of the leak, compounded by the news of the quite separate leak of Anglo-Irish negotiation documents to the Sunday Independent, and the evident unfairness of the slant put on Mary McAleese's views as expressed in these documents, gave her campaign a major boost.
The scale of her success clearly owed a good deal to this factor, although the support of the largest party and her own ability and strong personality would probably have secured a victory for her in any event. She deserves to be congratulated on the outcome.
Nevertheless, it has to be said that it was and is legitimate to hold the view that it was a mistake to have embroiled the Presidency in the Northern Ireland issue by introducing a candidate who, unlike Austin Currie in 1990, had been active on the Northern Ireland political scene right up to the time of her nominaton.
For my own part, I believe it would have been better at this critical juncture in Northern affairs to have avoided nominating a candidate strongly identified with one side in Northern Ireland, even though this was, of course, the side with which most people in this State instinctively sympathise.
At the very least this nomination carried the risk that opposition to such a candidate here, even if based upon considerations quite unrelated to Northern Ireland, would be seen by Northern nationalists as being motivated by hostility to, or at best lack of sympathy with and understanding of, the plight of Northern nationalists.
The sensitivity of Northern nationalist opinion to negative or apparently uncaring Southern attitudes towards their community is often underestimated here. We tend to overlook our share of the responsibility for the Northern Ireland tragedy; ignoring the fact that for half-a-century after independence our politicians and people effectively switched off Northern Ireland, leaving its nationalist population without support as they faced into decades of debilitating discrimination.
In those decades Northern Ireland effectively featured in our politics only as a political football at election times, when futile anti-partition speeches were thought appropriate, speeches the effect of which was to deepen unionist fears while at the same time encouraging a minority of young people in both jurisdictions to contemplate violent action to remedy our grievance.
It is true that since the early 1970s all Irish governments have been seriously engaged in efforts to alleviate the lot of nationalists in Northern Ireland and to bring peace to that area. But for several reasons this has failed to eliminate Northern nationalists' sense of alienation from their Southern compatriots.
Two of those reasons come to mind. First, to have any chance of success our politicians, of whatever party, who are seeking a solution to the Northern problem must necessarily adopt a more conciliatory approach to the British government and a more open attitude towards unionists than some Northern nationalists find it easy to accept.
Second, an erroneous but widespread belief amongst Northern nationalists that their Irish nationality depends upon Articles 2 and 3 of our Constitution has made many of them unhappy about the willingness of the Irish government to amend these articles as part of a resolution of the Northern crisis.
These and other underlying sources of North-South nationalist tension have, moreover, been aggravated by several further factors. On the one hand Northern nationalists have sensed resistance in Southern public opinion to the amount of time and energy devoted by governments here to the Northern problem. And many constitutional nationalists in the North are also at least subliminally aware of the negative vibes towards the SDLP that emanate from many politicians in every party here.
These tensions have hitherto been kept under control because of the skilful diplomatic handling by John Hume and his SDLP colleagues of the relationship between the constitutional nationalist political establishments North and South. Although the paranoia which seems to be endemic in politics has at times led each party here to see the SDLP as being too close to their opponents, the fact is that this party's leaders have been most careful never to take sides in our domestic affairs.
It is this crucial balance that was most unhappily disturbed by the intervention of a Northern nationalist personality in our presidential election. No one could possibly contest the right of any Northern Irish person to stand for election as President of Ireland, but it has been legitimate at this time to doubt the wisdom of their doing so, although clearly impolitic for a politician to express any such doubt publicly.
It has, of course, also been said that such a candidature might have a negative effect on relations with unionists. But this may be less of a problem because unionists are not that interested in our State.
It will be much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, for President-elect McAleese to replicate the role that President Robinson was able to play by visiting both communities in the North even-handedly. The Northern Ireland element of the campaign has turned out far more controversial than might have been imagined possible. All parties and our President-el ect must now surely seek to heal the damage done, in a multiplicity of ways, to the relationship between this State and the two communities in Northern Ireland.