Who in their right minds, would have forecast a week like this? One in which unionists, nationalists and republicans, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, finally got down to the business of governing Northern Ireland, together. A week in which Charlie McCreevy, too, managed to unite many in opposition to a budget that could have been the best of measures but - partly because of that - was thought by many to be one of the worst.
Michael Noonan thought it the most socially divisive he had seen. Derek McDowell called it immoral. Sean Healy of CORI said it was anti-poor, anti-family and anti-women. And the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, agreed.
Fianna Fail backbenchers, listening to complaints aired on the radio, began to worry about its impact on the electorate and sought assurance from the Minister. We haven't heard the end of it yet - not by a long chalk.
But by far the most significant chain of events, not only of the week but of decades - perhaps of the century - had already set the North on a new course.
Even as FF backbenchers and independent TDs worried about McCreevy's blunt-edged budget, new bodies and the end of old claims were fastening links and changing relationships between Belfast, Dublin and London.
As Northern Ireland took on the appearance of a new state, and long unfinished business came close to completion, the public may have seemed unimpressed.
The achievement is more impressive once the record is reeled out.
Eighty-five years ago, nationalists and unionists, proponents and opponents of Home Rule, might have fought a civil war - with weapons brought ashore at Larne in the North, Howth and Rathcoole in the South - if it hadn't been for the first World War.
Many who might have fought against each other enlisted in the British army and fought side by side. The impatience and frustration of the nationalists who stayed at home, and once more found their hopes of Home Rule denied, led to the Rising of 1916.
Civil war in the South, and a year of conflict between nationalists and unionists in the North, ensured that politics on both sides of the Border was distorted by violence and the legacies of violence.
Between North and South a sullen silence prevailed - until, in the mid-1960s, Sean Lemass and Terence O'Neill, then Taoiseach and Prime Minister, met in the snow at Stormont.
In Northern Ireland, the civil rights movement changed the question. The Nationalist Party spoke only of unity; the movement sought equal rights for citizens of Britain. It was an opportunity lost by both the British government and the unionists; and, in a sense, it's the question answered now by the establishment of a power-sharing executive and related bodies to accommodate relations with Dublin and London.
Now, citizens of all shades can pursue their constitutional ambitions while giving their allegiance to the political formation and institutions of Northern Ireland.
Because the executive and devolved administration is starting from scratch, there is an exciting opportunity for politicians, public servants and civil society to make it responsive to the people's needs.
But there is still, for the time being, unfinished business. Some important parts of the jigsaw have yet to be put in place; in particular, reform of the police and decommissioning.
At dark moments during the past 30 years, fears of full-scale civil war returned, fuelled by atrocities and the inability or unwillingness of London, Dublin and the Northern parties to agree how and by whom the North should be governed.
Now that the electorate of Northern Ireland has decided how and by whom it should be governed, the fears can finally be put to rest when the paramilitaries complete the decommissioning to which they are committed in the Belfast Agreement.
Some politicians and commentators in the Republic still believe decommissioning is an issue that can be resolved by finding a formula which means, well, whatever you want it to mean.
It isn't so. An Executive now sits in Stormont for the first time since 1974, when a brave attempt at power-sharing between unionists, nationalists and the Alliance Party went down, to cries of betrayal, in a welter of violence.
Republicans are members of the Executive; loyalists are members of the Assembly. There is nothing to prevent them pursuing their political ambitions by political means, and the politicians of this State should make it clear that they cannot, and will not, tolerate any act that jeopardises the progress which this week has seen.
One of the healthy effects of agreement in the North will be to free republicanism of the notion that to subscribe to the idea is to promote or support violence.
It's probably what Bertie Ahern had in mind when he spoke of the party's philosophy at the Fianna Fail president's dinner on Thursday night.
But, like charity, republicanism - with its egalitarian emphasis on the rights of citizens - should begin at home. And the first to learn the lesson in Fianna Fail should be Charlie McCreevy.
McCreevy's Budget was an accountant's, not a republican's. On "individualisation", giving one-income couples an advantage over those on two incomes, he even ignored the advice of his own Department, as is clear from a much-quoted ESRI publication:
"The main stated objection is by the Department . . . on the grounds that `the option ignores the key justification for the introduction of the existing married treatment, i.e. the need to avoid unjustifiable discrimination against one-earner households'."
He ignored the advice, presumably because it's easier to get married women back to work than to employ immigrants who, after all, have to be housed.
But the miserliness of McCreevy's Budget, as the St Vincent de Paul Society called it, leant on the poorest of citizens and failed utterly to narrow the gap between the poorly paid and the better off.
On RTE, George Lee said he found the approach shocking; and on Today FM, McCreevy, prompted by Eamon Dunphy, accused Lee of failing to understand him.
On the contrary, George Lee understands the Budget all too well. The failure and the disgrace are McCreevy's.
Dick Walsh can be contacted at dwalsh@irish-times.ie