The steady, quiet progress of the man with no plan

Inside Politics: Standing beside Tony Blair at Emhain Macha on Thursday, Bertie Ahern declared that he had given the best years of his life to the northern political process. In fairness to the Taoiseach, it has to be acknowledged that he has devoted an immense amount of time, energy and emotional commitment to the search for the ever-elusive solution.

The patience Ahern has shown over the past eight years, as one set of tortuous negotiations succeeded another, has been truly astounding. It is hard to think of any other Irish politician who would have stuck to the task with the same degree of commitment, refusing to be disheartened, as one apparently insoluble obstacle after another emerged, every time a solution came into view.

It can be argued that the Taoiseach's patience was part of the problem, in that it allowed things to run on so long that the moderate parties of the centre were pushed aside by the extremes, but we will never know if a more aggressive approach would have forced republicans into decommissioning on time or forced them back to violence.

What we do know is that systematic violence has ended, Northern Ireland has prospered, paramilitary criminality is finally being tackled and relations between the Irish Republic and Britain have never been better. The two communities in the North are probably as far apart as they ever were, but relations between North and South have improved out of all recognition.

If a powersharing Executive in the North can be established by the end of the year, the Taoiseach's dogged policy will be crowned with a final triumph. If, as appears likely, the Executive fails to materialise, Ahern will still be able to point to a hugely successful record on Anglo-Irish relations that has transformed relations between the two countries.

An important part of that achievement has been the manner in which Ahern has, once and for all, buried Fianna Fáil's civil war legacy. Most people take that for granted, but it is only two decades since Charles Haughey denounced the Anglo-Irish Agreement of Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher as a sell-out of nationalist aspirations at variance with Eamon de Valera's revered Constitution.

For many in Fianna Fáil, the territorial claim to the North in the Constitution was sacrosanct. Although the non-Fianna Fáil half of the electorate always had difficulty seeing what the fuss over an unenforceable claim was about, it meant a lot to party traditionalists. No government of any hue had dared to suggest getting rid of Articles Two and Three, fearing such a move would be rejected by the electorate.

Ahern, though, carried off the manoeuvre with aplomb, with over 90 per cent of the electorate voting to drop the territorial claim as part of the settlement enshrined in the Belfast Agreement. That constitutional change has had far more political impact than most people in the Republic ever expected and has contributed to a big improvement in North-South relations.

The Taoiseach's real political strength is that in any set of negotiations he doesn't appear to be wedded to a particular policy or solution. Once he is able to achieve movement in the general direction of his broad objective, he is willing to go along with whatever others can agree on. That approach resulted in one social partnership deal after another and it paved the way to the Belfast Agreement.

In the talks leading up to the agreement, Ahern established a relationship of trust with Gerry Adams and David Trimble, just as he has always managed to do with the trade unions and employers. By not having a rigid blueprint of his own, he seems able to get others to iron out their differences. If they can find a compromise they can live with, then it is acceptable to him.

It is part of the Taoiseach's style that he very rarely appears to take offence. For the most part he puts up with the insults and jibes of political life without betraying anger or even annoyance. During the recent Dáil row over Michael McDowell's description of Richard Bruton as a modern-day Joseph Goebbels, Ahern seemed genuinely perplexed at what all the fuss was about. He pointed out that McDowell had called him Ceausescu during the last general election campaign but he hadn't got upset about it and it didn't stop them going into government.

The Taoiseach's equable style is a huge political asset and it makes him extremely formidable. He will soon be nine years in office, yet he is still the strongest political card in the Fianna Fáil hand going into the next general elections. After such a long time in office, political leaders begin to grate on voters, no matter what their achievements. Hugely successful leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl found that out in the end.

Of course, the very quality that is Ahern's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. His unwillingness to assert a preferred outcome has, on occasion, led to a failure to take decisions and given rise to confusion about his intentions. The botched reshuffle of junior Ministers was the most recent example of how his natural approach can get him into trouble.

Yet his understated, accommodating manner and dogged persistence have made him a very formidable politician. He has every chance of being the first Taoiseach to pull off more than two successive election victories since Eamon de Valera in 1944.

Of course, Dev won his sixth in a row that year, but he had only been in office for 12 years at the time. A three in a row for Bertie after 10 years in 2007 would be one of the great achievements in Irish political history.