WHEN is consent not consent? When is soccer not cricket? When is sport not a game?
As heated arguments over final document wording continued behind the scenes at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation yesterday morning, efforts were made to advance the cause of an all Ireland football team.
There were priorities. Like the forum's final document and like the name of Jack Charlton's successor this being the much trumpeted public hearing on the role of sport in reconciliation.
"I suppose he won't answer it, so there's not much point in asking it ..." said the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, to the FM president, Mr Louis Kilcoyne.
Prompted a little later, Mr Kilcoyne did respond. "I can reveal exclusively that the job is going to Kenny," he said. Silence. "Pat Kenny," he continued, and the chamber erupted in laughter.
It was that sort of morning. Apparent anger in the castle courtyard over the publication of a final draft of the forum's political statement in this newspaper on Thursday and jokes all round in the public session, coupled with repeated statements of regret over the GAA's refusal to attend.
The Northern Ireland Sports Council had also sent apologies. Both bodies had indicated they would make submissions shortly.
"So maybe we'll be able to have them here together," the chairwoman, Judge Catherine McGuinness, said cheerfully.
Funding of sport at junior level, the advantages of a united soccer team, poor media coverage of women's sport and proposals for an all island sports forum were recurring themes during the two hour session with a panel led by the chairman of Cospoir, the former Garda Commissioner, Mr Eamon Doherty.
There should be a joint Anglo Irish bid for the Olympic Games, Mr Pat Hickey, president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, proposed. Also on the panel were Mr Kilcoyne, Dr Syd Millar, president of the Irish Rugby Football Union, Ms Mary Logue, an international hockey player, and Mr Trevor Coyle, a member of the international showjumping team.
Both Northerners, Dr Millar and Mr Coyle emphasised the advantages of an all Ireland national sports body and the lack of sectarianism within their respective activities.
Segregation at school, Mr Coyle said, was "supposed to be a kind of protection". In fact, he later saw it as "a pathetic attempt at conditioning in the society in which I lived".
There were questions about the advantages of a full sports - minister at Cabinet level, about the effect of professionalism on Irish rugby and about the difficulties which women face in attracting sponsorship when they, get so little media coverage.
Yes, Ireland had lost about", half a dozen good rugby players, as a result of financial incentives offered across the water, Dr Millar said. "It is not going to affect peace and reconciliation ... except between us and England," he remarked.
Showjumpers were neither Protestant nor Catholic; they were just horsepeople", Mr Coyle said. "In that environment, people began to trust one another," he said. Children who could have been segregated through the North's educational system had a chance to meet before they were 18.
On flags and anthems, they should be forgotten about, in the showjumper's view. His son recently stood up for the national anthem at school. It was God Save the Queen. His son turned to him, aghast. "Daddy," he said. "They're playing the wrong song!"
As for an all Ireland bid for a World Cup, Mr Kilcoyne was sanguine. It was the FAI which split from the IFA in 1921, he said. Reconciliation was not a priority. "Our business is to run football."
The Cospoir chairman was more emphatic. "Personally, soccer football is the one sport that we want to see reunited," Mr Doherty said.
