As long as the main issue is paramilitary violence, talks between political parties are useless, writes Frank Millar.
Does the Irish Government now have a genuine problem with Sinn Féin and the IRA? Or are Martin McGuinness and others right in suspecting electoral calculations masquerading as righteous indignation?
If it is the former, does the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, grasp that there must be implications for democracy and for the conduct of politics throughout this island? If the latter, can they really think to play fast-and-loose with the Belfast Agreement without damaging, and possibly lasting, consequences?
And, given all that has gone before (including, crucially, the negotiation preceding last November's Assembly election), are the British and Irish governments being entirely straight either with, or about, Sinn Féin?
These are questions exercising the dwindling band retaining any interest in the North as the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, flies into Dublin for what Mr Ahern admits will be "important talks" but what each side denies is a "crisis" summit.
It is not hard to imagine the robust terms in which the Taoiseach and the Minister would dismiss the very idea that any action of theirs might endanger the Good Friday accord. Yet they cannot be unaware of the perception that this Government is facing both ways on the question of the republican movement and Sinn Féin's fitness for political office.
Nor can they be in any doubt that the terms in which this debate are being conducted within the Republic directly informs opinion and attitudes in Northern Ireland.
On the one hand, we are told the Sinn Féin leadership - now likened to the Brownshirts and Nazis of pre-war Germany - is guilty of vomit-making hypocrisy and that the party's political activities are part-funded by organised crime, including "criminal heists" at Dublin Port.
Yet, on the other hand, in his recent UTV interview, Mr Ahern insisted that "the politics of exclusion" does not work, that people should have regard to the quality of the IRA ceasefire over nine years and that - to the charge of double standards on either side of the border - the North is, after all, still in a state of transition.
There is a certain irony here. In framing the DUP's Devolution Now proposals, the party's deputy leader, Peter Robinson, thought he had avoided the "exclusion" trap. Yet, fuelled by the pre-election debate in the Republic, unionism is again converging on "the politics of exclusion" - with increasingly strident demands that the SDLP ("under cover" of the Irish Government, it is hoped) should resume devolved government by way of a "voluntary coalition" without Sinn Féin.
What is more, there are grounds for thinking some in the British government would be happy to see the SDLP take such a course if only the Irish would agree.
And why wouldn't they? Notwithstanding their own role in calling the November election, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern are already agreed it was the IRA that fatally undermined David Trimble's moderate unionist leadership, and that continuing IRA activity is now the principal obstacle to the resumption of power-sharing at Stormont.
Senior British sources privately admit the DUP has "a fair question" when it asks why Northern Ireland should be denied the benefits of devolved government because the IRA disqualifies Sinn Féin by failing to maintain a complete and unequivocal ceasefire. The Taoiseach, meanwhile, echoes the current apparent anti-republican consensus by indicating that it is the republican movement's transition - from terror to democracy - which must now be completed. Calling for the "complete retirement of all paramilitary activity", Mr Ahern told the Fianna Fáil ardfheis: "Nationalist Ireland, this republican party, the Irish people, demand no less."
Yet Mr McDowell voices the fear that Sinn Féin does not want to leave paramilitarism behind. What if he is right, and the demand of the Irish people goes unheeded? Does that refusal translate into a permanent IRA veto over all political development in the North? Or are Dublin and London prepared to specify what needs to be done and when, while signalling that republicans are capable of excluding themselves and that, in clearly defined circumstances, the political process can and should proceed without them?
It is here, one suspects, that the realpolitik will cut across the pre-election rhetoric. British ministers and officials might be tempted by thoughts of a voluntary coalition but Mr Blair almost certainly shares Mr Ahern's instinct that it simply would not work. Having refused to act against Sinn Féin from a position of strength, is the SDLP really going to do it now that it faces extinction?
And how would the majority nationalist/republican community in the North react to any subsequent Assembly election to legitimise a devolved government free of Sinn Féin participation?
Mr Ahern knows only too well that Gerry Adams leads the only party with the history and capacity to answer that question in the single word: boycott.
So what to do? To suspend the current review of the agreement, re-structure or rename it is plainly an answer to nothing. Yet talks between the parties are meaningless in circumstances where the governments have decided the over-riding question is continuing paramilitarism. The only dialogue which counts for now is between the governments and the republican movement, on the same "acts of completion" agenda that all three thought they had signed off last October.
Indeed it is not hard to understand some of Sinn Féin's fury, given that had Mr Trimble not pulled the plug at the last gasp, the two governments would happily have had the election fought on the assertion that republicans had already satisfied the requirements of paragraph 13 of the British-Irish Joint Declaration.
In the aftermath of that debacle Mr Ahern observed that they had spoken to everybody but P O'Neill.
Perhaps this time there should be no room left for ambiguity and the governments should insist that any new negotiation is with the IRA.
Before entering any new understanding, moreover, Mr Ahern should also satisfy himself that the terms and conditions stipulated will also qualify Sinn Féin for full membership of the Republic's democratic club.
Mr McDowell insists there can be no further fudge. Unionists will take that to mean no more double standards either.