The successful implementation of the Belfast Agreement will ensure that "no community or tradition in Ireland will be able to turn its back on the other again", the John Hewitt Summer School has heard.
It would fulfil the ideal of a republic as envisaged by a founder of the United Irishmen, William Drennan, said the special adviser to the Taoiseach, Dr Martin Mansergh, who addressed the school in Carnlough, Co Antrim, at the weekend.
Dedicating his lecture to the memory of Drennan, who was tried for sedition in 1794 but acquitted, he spoke of his importance in the development of republicanism. "If Wolfe Tone is regarded as the father of revolutionary republican separatism, William Drennan is the father of democracy in Ireland and of constitutional republicanism."
Drennan, along with Tone and others, represented a tradition which "was the formative influence shaping Irish destinies for much of the 1790s and by its after-effects for long afterwards". He was, said Dr Mansergh, "a thoroughgoing democrat who wished to extend the elective franchise to the whole body of the people so as to create an equality of rights and a social union".
Despite being an unjustly neglected figure, Drennan's ideas and beliefs had informed much of the development of the modern republic. Drennan's belief in religious tolerance and liberty and his wish that all could participate fully in the civic life of the state were, to a greater degree, realised ambitions in the South.
" . . . the ecumenical atmosphere in the South is generally very good, and has been for some time. There is mutual respect, co-operation and a general desire to be inclusive. The laws of the State today are in general pluralist in character. More liberal Catholic opinion has seen to that.
"Moreover, there is complete equality of opportunity. Whatever about controversies about a county librarian 65 years ago, there are no positions in civil society either in theory or in practice barred to people of any religious belief or none," he said.
This stood in stark contrast to the way in which Northern Ireland had developed. "It would be difficult to argue that Northern Ireland has offered a superior democratic experience up until now."
Turning to the Belfast Agreement and current political developments in the North, Dr Mansergh argued that Irish unity might be possible but only through a less "antagonistic" approach. Trust and co-operation would have to be established gradually and with care.
Continued punishment beatings "which occasionally end in punishment killings" would not be tolerated by society, Dr Mansergh said. "The barbarity employed is totally at odds with the vindication of human rights claimed in other contexts, as if such rights have only to be observed by the agencies of the State," he said.
The obstruction of reform in 1798 had not taken place in 1998. In this regard, he praised the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Mo Mowlam. The agreed programme of reform and constitutional change found in the Belfast Agreement meant that any continuance of armed action would be "both futile and counter-productive".