Elsewhere in the Department of Foreign Affairs files for 1977, there are copious traces of the Northern Ireland Troubles and their impact on the work of the department.
One file records the exchanges at the Vatican in March between Archbishop Casaroli and the outgoing foreign minister, Garret FitzGerald, who alerted the Vatican that a united Ireland would need to be a more pluralist Ireland and that some review of the hierarchy's attitude to Church-State relations might be required. "We all had a certain ambivalence in this matter," he said.
On some occasions the hierarchy spoke as if "we should hold firmly to those elements and aspects of the State" which derived from partition and which had left the Republic "overwhelmingly Catholic"; although the bishops also say they would be willing "to accept appropriate adjustments when and if unity is achieved".
FitzGerald had a difficulty with this approach as it was "difficult to say to the Protestant population that certain things which could not be accepted now would somehow become tolerable" if Ireland were to be united.
All of this could be an obstacle to the reconciliation which all desired and it was important "to find a way through this problem".
The Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations was also involved. Ambassador Eamonn Kennedy arranged that John Hume have an audience with secretary general Kurt Waldheim who often gave the ambassador "the uncomfortable feeling" that he really did not grasp the essentials of the Ulster situation despite many explanations.
After listening to Hume's call for international pressure to be brought on the British to live up to their responsibilities in the North, Waldheim asked Hume if he saw a role for the United Nations in Northern Ireland.
Kennedy comments at this point that he often got the impression that "far from sensing the difficulties of United Nations involvement", Waldheim "actually seems to seek a role for the organisation there. Perhaps, like most heads of international organisations, he wishes to follow up every opening for UN activity he can see, but his attitude might also reflect the lack of a real intellectual grasp of the situation."
Kennedy then reports Hume's response: he felt that while the UN "might very well have a role in the event of a sudden British withdrawal in separating the majority from the minority, we were not yet in a Cyprus-type situation".
And besides duties in Downing Street, the Vatican and UN headquarters, some foreign affairs officials had more lowly tasks, such as how to reply to an innocent professor of political science, William S Livingstone, who wrote from the University of Texas at Austin to the Irish Embassy in Washington inquiring whether Conor Cruise O'Brien was a member of Jack Lynch's new government.
"I know that he was a minister in its predecessor, but I presume the election may have made a difference."
There was a time in foreign affairs when the diplomat assigned to handle such an inquiry would not have resisted injecting some humour or mischief into the reply - Cruise O'Brien himself would scarcely have resisted - but Máirtín Ó Fainin, first secretary in Washington, contented himself with informing Livingston that O'Brien was not a member of the new Irish government.
"In fact Dr O'Brien is not now a member of the Irish Parliament as he lost his seat in the recent general election."
The Washington embassy had more significant duties. They successfully beefed up a rather anodyne peace message for Northern Ireland from president Jimmy Carter. And they kept close to Senator Ted Kennedy, forwarding in November a copy of a letter he had received from northern secretary Roy Mason.
Mason was appreciative of Kennedy's efforts "to educate Irish-American opinion about the realities of the Northern Ireland situation", thereby helping the security situation in general.
Mason added: "I am politician enough to appreciate that it is no easy matter for you, in your domestic 'constituency', to swing opinion away from the traditional support of the more extreme partisans in Northern Ireland, and to replace the myth of patriots fighting for independence with the truth of criminals killing and maiming senselessly in a situation where their actions have little political point."
Britain's aim was full devolution of executive and legislative powers but there would be no "dramatic initiative".
The "most fruitful ideas are those that are seen to be 'home-grown'". Mason had no interest in erecting "a sham". In the meantime he believed that direct rule would prove "effective, positive and impartial".
John Bowman