The Hillsborough Declaration has, to borrow one of its own phrases, been put "beyond use". Elements of nationalism which were sceptical about its viability are both pleased and relieved. Some unionists are still trying to keep it in play, but others acknowledge it is dead in the water.
Some of the ideas and formulae contained within the document have not, however, exhausted their shelf-life. The demand for the IRA to decommission in the short term remains, although the reality that the republicans have no intention of doing so in the immediate future has sunk in.
The First Minister appeared to take a conciliatory line towards republicans when he acknowledged yesterday there was no "immediate danger" of a return to full-scale IRA violence. Although Dr Ian Paisley described these as "the words of a man prepared to do a deal", Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin was unimpressed and said Mr Trimble's remarks would fool nobody.
During the Hillsborough negotiations, reporters were kept firmly outside the castle gates most of the time and admitted only occasionally to hear the latest "spin": therefore it is difficult to get a definitive version of events inside.
Both republicans and unionists claim they knew nothing about the proposal for a collective act of reconciliation until they heard it read out by Mr Blair as part of the declaration.
Mr Ahern appeared to convey the impression in comments to the media that week that the principle of decommissioning was agreed, but Sinn Fein denies agreeing any such thing. "There was no indication by us privately or publicly that we were going to buy in to the Hillsborough Declaration," said a Sinn Fein spokesman.
Image seems to have played a big part in the production of the Hillsborough document. Prime ministers do not like being tagged as losers and in the absence of general agreement, they could not come out of a four-day "talkathon" with empty hands.
The document they came out with contained some interesting ideas, but when Sinn Fein, the Progressive Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the Women's Coalition all began to reject or at least take their distance from it, the Hillsborough Declaration had to be pushed to the edge of the table, teetering over a waiting dustbin.
With hindsight, the comments of the two prime ministers at the launch of the declaration were excessively upbeat. Mr Blair said it was "another huge and significant milestone". Mr Ahern said: "We have now succeeded in overcoming the last difficult hurdles that are standing in the way of the implementation of the Good Friday agreement."
In retrospect, it looks like an attempt to "bounce" the IRA into a gesture on arms without much basis for believing the manoeuvre would be successful.
The Mitchell document which preceded the Belfast Agreement may have ended in the dustbin but it served a purpose and pushed the unionists, in particular, down the road to the final compromise. It does not look as if the Hillsborough text will have a similar effect on republicans. Rather than weakening their resolve it has made them dig in even deeper.
Nevertheless, a senior official on the British side insisted this week: "The issues won't change, therefore the elements that ad dress them won't change."
Meanwhile, on the streets and amid the country hedgerows, shadowy groups are planting pipe-bombs in nationalist homes. Drumcree Sunday is also edging closer - July 4th this year - but against a background of political stagnation rather than the nascent hope of 1998.
There are few signs at present of fresh thinking on the Rubik's Cube issue of decommissioning. While the meetings in London on Monday between party delegations and the two prime ministers will do no harm, there are suspicions that they are little more than a holding exercise.
There was a slightly shambolic atmosphere at Stormont during the week. Senior politicians were fairly thin on the ground and not all of those present seemed to know what was going on anyway.
There was also a general air of disunity: the Ulster Unionists and their parliamentary allies, the PUP, took different stances on the Hillsborough text. When the smaller parties began to back away from the declaration, it provided grim satisfaction to Sinn Fein, but Mr Seamus Mallon of the SDLP was clearly very annoyed.
With his inimitable turn of phrase, the SDLP's Mark Durkan said some time back that you couldn't have the unionists and Sinn Fein playing "chicken", with everyone else in the middle playing "headless chicken", but there was a touch of that in the atmosphere at Stormont.
It brought home the centrality of Mr Blair: the demands of the Kosovo crisis meant he could not play his usual role of edging the unionists towards a compromise, the same role Mr Ahern plays with republicans.
There is a view in some nationalist circles, expressed with considerable emotion even by moderates, that Dublin misread the republican attitude to decommission ing and that Hillsborough was "a bridge too far" and had proved counterproductive.
The critics now hope that Mr Ahern realises the republican constituency would not allow its leaders to decommission in the short term, even if they wanted to, and that putting the guns "beyond use" will be a long, slow process with uncertain results.
"We are caught between a rock and a hard place," said one Dublin official. On the British side, official sources said there was no question of "recreating Hillsborough in London". The prime ministers, despite being one of the best Anglo-Irish double acts, could not resolve the impasse unless the parties were willing to show some flexibility.
While most attention has been focused on the internal difficulties of unionism in the past year, we are now likely to hear a good deal more about the problems facing the Sinn Fein leadership.
One solution, suggested by a Stormont wag during the week, was that a document be produced which "everyone could be against", a kind of cross-community version of Ulster Says No.