What a week - the Clintons singing Danny Boy, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair smiling like there's no tomorrow, and a palpable surge of hope that the Belfast Agreement will endure, perhaps even triumph some day.
While Bertie told Hillary to "give them hell" in the US Senate, a less comfortable question danced on some Northern lips. Who exactly is expected to change as a result of the agreement? Is transparency a matter for Northern Ireland alone?
Within months of the Hugh O'Flaherty controversy, the Irish Government has again come up smelling of dandelions over appointments. Despite its insistence Northern politicians operate fair and transparent processes in setting up new bodies, the Government may consider its actions exempt from standards it expects them to enforce. There are some details it has to straighten out, among them the setting up of independent procedures for human rights.
Reading between the lines, it looks as though the Government believes there is a two-track system for implementing the agreement: one for them, another for us. After all, they had got it very wrong, hadn't they? We, in comparison, are the guardians of minority rights . .
The rights provisions created under the agreement are supposed to apply equally north and south. Northern Ireland managed its human rights appointments so transparently that even the position of president of the commission was advertised. The Republic, however, overturned almost all the recommendations of its own independent advisers.
In a back room at Dublin Castle a few days ago, Dermot Nesbitt smiled about it all. He was attending an all-Ireland conference on human rights, which should have been a positive and celebratory occasion. Speaker after speaker expressed not only anger but a belief they had been treated contemptuously by the Government. Nesbitt made no comment; the words "wait until the next time you tell us what to do with Patten" hung in the air.
Martin McGrath, Northern Ireland's director of the Committee for the Administration for Justice, put the case forcefully. He belonged to the panel which had sifted through some 177 applications in the Republic, along with others like Mary Murphy of the Society of St Vincent de Paul and Inez McCormack, president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. They had used international principles already cleared with the Irish Government.
But only one of their final list was politically acceptable. So if the criteria used were wrong, as the Government's response indicated, then on what basis should the human rights commissioners have been appointed? The Government had set up the process but had not sat in on it, or interviewed the candidates. Now, it was making a political judgment without saying why, or how.
You didn't have to look far to see how deflated so many people were who spent years working for almost nothing in the community and voluntary sector.
Was their failure down to the fact they were too polite, too decent to block access routes to Dublin airport or stop rush-hour traffic by protesting outside the Dail?
The eyes of people in the Traveller movement showed downright hurt. One recommended commissioner was drawn from their community, but he was dropped. Can anyone persuade them it was not for ethnic reasons? Will anyone have the courtesy to try?
It is telling to imagine how the Irish Government would have responded had the same thing happened in Northern Ireland. The Government has a clear vision of what should happen there, and how necessary it is that community and minority groups, from all over the six counties, be mainstreamed within the new dispensation.
ITS vision for this jurisdiction is much less certain. It has taken to itself the right to be the arbiter on human rights, contrary to many international protocols. The belief that "we're all right Jack" extends to the Opposition parties too, who failed to challenge the Government. The clear message is that the rights provisions and processes following from the Belfast Agreement are a matter for Northern Ireland only.
Can they be so sure they've got it right? Every indicator suggests abuses of rights and power are the main source of unease within this society too.
Faced with the harrowing abuses being examined by the Lindsay tribunal, Government may imagine this was an exceptional accident, rather than an urgent example of the need for an enforceable patients' charter. Faced with public dissatisfaction about the growing gap between rich and poor, it may prefer to pretend that a well-paid poverty industry is inventing a crisis that does not exist.
John O'Donoghue had the sensitivity to realise the extent of unrest within the community sector: he's bringing new proposals to Government next week that will probably increase the number of commissioners. Seven recommended commissioners remain excluded. It remains to be seen if Government will finally do the decent thing.
mruane@irish-times.ie