The Belfast Agreement has resulted in stalemate

Inside Politics: The determination of Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair to give the people of Northern Ireland devolved government, whether they want it or not, is beginning to make them look increasingly foolish.

When they met in London on Wednesday they were forced to recognise that, once again, the time was not right for an initiative on devolution but they still proclaimed their determination to continue the quest.

The two leaders were forced to recognise reality to the extent of deferring plans for at least a few months to restore the Northern Assembly, in some shape or form. They might have been better advised to face the fact that devolution is not going to happen for the foreseeable future and to devise their political strategy accordingly.

It is not surprising that they are wedded to the Belfast Agreement, which both played such a part in creating, but it is time to subject it to a cold analysis. The hard fact of the matter is that it is now eight years since the agreement was laboriously put together. If one crucial part of the deal is still not working, after all that time, then maybe the inescapable conclusion is that it is never going to work.

The Taoiseach and the prime minister are naturally reluctant to draw that conclusion, particularly as Mr Blair is probably in his last year in office and Mr Ahern is facing a general election in a little over a year. They seem desperately keen to give it one last go but the omens are not good and it seems doomed to failure once again.

That is not to say that the Belfast Agreement has been a failure. A great deal of good has flowed from it and from the determination of the Taoiseach and the prime minister to devote such a huge amount of their time to the problem. Relations between the governments and peoples of the two islands have never been better, there has been a distinct thawing in unionist attitudes to the Republic, and the IRA finally appears to have gone away.

The only serious problem left is that unionists and nationalists seem incapable of working together in a power-sharing arrangement in the North. For that state of affairs the two leaders have to take some responsibility because they allowed the conditions to develop in which the moderate parties on both sides were undermined. The North's voters chose the extremes of the DUP and Sinn Féin and the predictable result was stalemate.

At the last meeting of the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body in Edinburgh back in December, Paul Bew, the professor of Irish politics at Queen's University, came up with an interesting thesis. Referring to the conventional wisdom that the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, negotiated by Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher, had been a stepping stone on the way to the ultimate settlement represented by the Belfast Agreement of 1998, he suggested that maybe the commentators and academics had got it all wrong.

Prof Bew said that instead of being a stepping stone, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was based on the notion of the North being run in some joint fashion by the British and Irish governments, was more likely to provide the template for a long-term solution.

The two communities in the North are now more polarised than ever and polling data have shown that there is no great demand for devolved government. Up to 70 per cent of unionists don't want it and neither do 50 per cent of nationalists. Given that underlying fact, it is hardly a surprise that their political representatives cannot agree.

The basic problem as far as unionists are concerned is that they don't want to be ruled by Sinn Féin and would much prefer direct rule from London. On the nationalist side there is no great affection for a return of Stormont in any guise, even if it involves power-sharing. The paradox in unionist attitudes is that while they are not willing to have Sinn Féin in government, the Belfast Agreement has changed their perception of the South. Instead of appearing as an alien state wanting to take them over, the Republic is now seen by at least some unionists as a bulwark against domination by Sinn Féin.

When the Belfast Agreement was being negotiated, a central preoccupation of unionists was to prevent the creation of significant North/South institutions. Other issues, such as the release of paramilitary prisoners, decommissioning and the future of policing, which were to have such a huge impact later, often appeared to be secondary to them at the time.

Now the main preoccupation of unionists is to avoid being ruled by Sinn Féin. The penny seems to have dropped with them that the same sentiment is shared by a significant segment of the electorate in the Republic. Instead of regarding the Irish Government as the antiChrist, some unionists now take the view that it may be a more acceptable partner for the future than Sinn Féin.

One thing that both politicians and the electorate in the Republic may have underestimated is the impact of dropping the territorial claim in Articles Two and Three of the Constitution. They were never taken very seriously in the South but unionists, tending to be more literal minded, did have a genuine problem with them. Their removal has paved the way for better relations between the unionist parties and the Government of the Republic. A few years ago the notion of the Rev Ian Paisley coming to Dublin for a reasonably friendly chat with the Taoiseach would have seemed impossible but it is now an accepted fact of political life.

The task ahead is to devise proper structures for improved North/South relations. The Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, has laid huge stress on economic co-operation, particularly the creation of an all-Ireland approach to infrastructural development. That should act as a spur for genuine cross-Border political co-operation. Maybe it is time to forget devolution and look at new ways of building better North-South institutions.