One word cropped up again and again concerning the Prince of Wales's visit to Dublin yesterday and today. Normal, normality, normalisation: no matter what way it is expressed, it seems the appropriate way to describe the changing relations between Ireland and Britain that have made Prince Charles's second official visit to the Republic a more accepted, almost a routine occasion.
He packed a lot into a short time yesterday, meeting a cross-section of leading figures and ordinary people involved in some of the same voluntary organisations he has made his own in the United Kingdom. He clearly warmed to the informality of the engagements and this communicated itself to curious and for the most part friendly onlookers. Protests by Republican dissident organisations were more or less normal too.
Such everyday encounters are important precisely because the British-Irish relationship is so highly charged with emotional and political symbolism. The constitutional and religious role of the British monarchy has made it the central symbolic fact of an extremely tangled history with the Republic and with pre-Partition Ireland. The same facts continue to resonate powerfully in the day-to-day political life of Northern Ireland. So the dignified observation by a Franciscan priest yesterday seems appropriate and representative: "I am pleased that relations between our two countries and our different Christian traditions are being normalised".
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Prince Charles hoped this visit would ease the way to one by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in the near future. That has been put clearly on the agenda, following the gradual implementation of the Belfast Agreement. People in the Republic need to be much more aware that their attitudes can have a powerful impact in Northern Ireland, among Protestants and Unionists going through a traumatic adjustment to new political and demographic realities. If such gestures as the award of royal honours to Daniel O'Donnell and other people who have worked to improve British-Irish relations help to ease that transition they are well worth the effort.
Normalisation might be described as a mutual recognition based on rights and justice, leading to a flow of communication and interaction that helps to realise the full potential of the close relationships between the peoples of these islands. It took a step forward in Dublin yesterday.