However negative Ian Paisley managed to sound outside the Irish Embassy earlier this week, he noticeably avoided closing off the possibility of a Northern Ireland settlement on the basis of the IRA convincingly abandoning paramilitary activities and criminality. There is now a real possibility of such a settlement, perhaps in the early part of next year.
However, the peace process has gone on for so long, and has evoked so much controversy, that in both parts of the island there has been a failure to contemplate the consequences of its success, which I believe will be much more complex and demanding than many now imagine.
First of all, we in this State will have to get accustomed to the presence in our parliament of a Sinn Féin party that may at times hold a balancing position. This is likely in time to force our politicians to pay more attention than they have done hitherto, not only to North-South relations. but also to the problem of urban disadvantage. Sinn Féin's future growth of support will come from such areas, where it already seems to be attracting the votes of up to half of young working-class males.
We are also going to have to face up to the need to reintegrate into society, both North and South, a significant number of former members of the IRA whose employment prospects could be adversely affected by their police records.
If, through distaste, reluctance or inertia we fail to address this issue in the near future, and if many of these people were as a result left on the dust-heap of urban unemployment, we would not be ensuring that not alone does the IRA abandon violence, but so also do its ex-members.
Next there is the delicate and rarely adverted-to problem of the relationship between Northern and Southern nationalism.
There has never been much willingness in this part of the island to accept any share of responsibility for the Northern Ireland tragedy. We have always been happy simply to hang the blame for it all around British necks.
This was always easy because the division of the island was largely a consequence of the grossly irresponsible interplay of party politics in Britain between 1885 and 1922.
Moreover, the generally ham-fisted British security response to the acute phase of the Northern crisis between 1970 and the early 1990s seriously aggravated, and I feel prolonged, the crisis there.
But we ought now to face the fact that our politicians and public opinion also played a major role in perpetuating and aggravating the Northern Ireland crisis, for during some 50 years between the mid-1920s and the 1970s we in this State effectively abandoned the Northern nationalist community.
It was an abandonment that had deeply traumatic effects on them. Instead of energetically pursuing with Britain its failure to tackle discrimination in the North, for decades we contented ourselves with counterproductive national claims on its territory.
Successive Irish governments' neglect of the welfare of the Northern minority certainly contributed to the eventual explosion there, and over time to a dangerous alienation of Northern nationalists from the political leadership of our State, and more generally from the people of the South.
In turn, despite moments here of emotional identification with Northern nationalism - for example, after the Derry massacre and at the time of the hunger-strikes - most people in the Republic gradually became increasingly alienated from Northern nationalism, and largely lost any real sense of commitment to the North, switching off from its violence and bitterness.
This never-discussed gulf between Northern and Southern nationalists is potentially dangerous to the future of our island. Not alone does it hamper relationships between nationalist politicians North and South, but Northern nationalists' unhappiness with and suspicions of Southern politicians make it more difficult for Irish governments to establish better relationships with politicians representing the unionist community.
Within the North, the 1989 Anti-Discrimination Act - one of the fruits of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement - has effectively eliminated discrimination against the nationalist minority in employment. Because Catholics in the past found it harder to secure employment after school, more of them sought higher education and have thus become better placed to secure employment and promotion under the new conditions of fair and equal treatment.
Unhappily these gains have been accompanied by some signs of nationalist triumphalism, which is liable to intensify unionist angst, contributing to a form of counter-alienation in that side of the community.
Both of the North's universities now have Catholic majorities among their students, which has intensified the tendency of Protestant school-leavers to seek higher education in Britain, from which a majority do not return to the North.
This brain drain further weakens the Northern economy which, over the decades, has lost huge ground to the Republic. Half a century ago the North produced 37-38 per cent of the output of this island. Today this figure has fallen back to 23-24 per cent. By 2001 output per head in Northern Ireland, which 50 years ago was almost one-quarter higher than in the Republic, fell short of ours by a similar margin.
Only massive transfers from Britain through social welfare payments maintain Northern living standards at a level broadly similar to ours. But this huge subsidisation has both sapped the viability of its economy - on a scale similar to the situation that exists in east Germany even 15 years after its mishandled reunification - and has created a formidable economic as well as political obstacle to any form of Irish unity.
Turning Northern Ireland into a successfully functioning polity and economy, working harmoniously and beneficially with our State, will certainly test the political skills and capacity for co-operation of those leaders who may soon have control of its destiny.
But this will also demand of Southern politicians a much greater commitment to the whole island of Ireland than they have hitherto been required to demonstrate as leaders of the Irish State.