Bertie Ahern seized the day. He'd announced the National Plan. Now, within hours, came news of significant movement in Northern Ireland: a happy coincidence on the eve of a new century.
Ireland, North and South, was being presented with the freedom to choose where to go from here. If all went well, there was the promise of a new state in Northern Ireland and a fairer society in the Republic. A freedom we'd hoped for and talked about but never really expected.
But the choice may turn out to be as challenging as the limitations which once frustrated us on both fronts.
Even as Mr Ahern welcomed a new dawn, Mary Harney spotted a snag; and it had to do with the plan - not, as might have been expected, with the completion of the Belfast Agreement.
She recalled how our ambitions had long been frustrated, noted how our fortune had changed and asked, now that we had the resources, whether we had the imagination to use them.
Others asked the same question in a different way. John Bruton, Ruairi Quinn, the ICTU and some voluntary organisations speak of the need for vision - the sense of knowing what we, as a society, want to achieve.
The authors of the plan aren't quite sure. Facing some passionate criticism by Brendan Howlin and Eoghan Harris on Questions and Answers the other night, Charlie McCreevy simply seemed puzzled.
After all, the Government was planning to spend over £40 billion in the next seven years. What more did it have to do to satisfy the opposition and the do-gooders - concerned, in this case, with the treatment of refugees?
The trouble is that £40 billion is almost as meaningless as long lists of unconnected projects unless both are part of a coherent whole.
And even when the Government announces it is planning to spend billions on health, education and welfare, or considerable sums on literacy programmes, the electorate remains wary and suspicious.
The announcements should have been greeted with delight all round. But many, wearied by scandals and broken promises, now prefer to wait and see how the programmes work out in practice.
There's a paradox here. If we are to judge by conventional wisdom, the real focus of public suspicion this week would have to be on the political manoeuvres in the North. And it's clear the courage of David Trimble and his allies in the Ulster Unionist Party is being tested - more ominously by colleagues and unionists outside the UUP than by their old nationalist and republican opponents.
The pro-agreement unionists have powerful arguments on their side. They can point to their critics' failure to find an alternative; the dawning realisation in Sinn Fein that political ambitions can be realised only by political means; and the step-by-step strategy designed by George Mitchell.
But some features of the challenges facing Ireland, North and South, are, or are about to become, common to both parts of the country.
In the North elaborate electoral and administrative mechanisms have been devised to encompass North-South and east-west relations; they'll come into operation when the present process is complete. How much better off we'd be if our national plan were as painstakingly devised and as carefully monitored. Monitoring in the past has been required by the European Union, since most of the funds invested were voted by the EU. Now that all but 10 per cent of the £46 billion is raised at home, careful monitoring is in all our interests.
And if social inclusion is really intended by the plan's authors, then monitoring is essential to ensure that social inclusion is, indeed, the result.
Inside the North, many of the administrative mechanisms are intended to overcome sectarian divisions: are we beginning to hear an echoing drumbeat of racism in the Republic?
The signs are discouraging. The criticism by Liz O'Donnell of our discredited immigration policy is supported by Mr Bruton, Mr Quinn, Mr Howlin and many voluntary organisations. But her loudest critic is none other than the chairman of the Eastern Health Board, Ivor Callely.
Mr Callely's views should be no surprise: he has publicly criticised the admission of immigrants for years. What is surprising is that he's still chairman of a statutory board which is largely responsible for the welfare of refugees. The question is: why?
In the North, politicians, commentators and business leaders are beginning to look to the Republic and not only for example in the area of development.
Some say they're also anxious to anticipate what some in the Republic wryly - or cynically - describe as the problems of prosperity. Here, Northern politicians and administrators can only learn from our mistakes.
They have what can best be described as a new state to work on - one in which a complex institutional system finally allows people of all persuasions to pursue their constitutional or other ambitions. Because of old animosities and the problems they imposed on Northern society, they are now obliged to maintain in practice the equality which their leaders proclaim in politics.
They may conclude that the trouble with the national plan is that the Government seems to have paid a lot of attention to economics and little or none to politics.
THEY may even agree with Mary Harney about the frightening shortage of imagination which, in turn, is reflected in the paucity of debate on even the most significant developments.
It's a shame that, just when political discussion is needed most, RTE should have chosen to withdraw one of its most stimulating programmes, Finlay and Gallagher.
Political discussion has been reduced in too many cases to jittery conservatism and soft-centred hackery. On Finlay and Gallagher, Fergus Finlay at least regularly showed that he was neither party-bound nor hidebound.
Of all the station's recent adventures and misadventures in news and current affairs it came closest to the open-ended debate reached by Hurlers on the Ditch and Today Tonight.
But it's not only old lags, remembering the achievements of the 1960s and the 1970s, who must feel that time for debate - and not only in RTE - is being taken up with the froth of low-level gossip.
This is bad enough in other broadcasting and print media. In RTE, with its public interest responsibilities, it should not happen.
Dick Walsh can be contacted at dwalsh@irish-times.ie