Some in Ireland may have had an uneasy feeling about the arrival in office of the far-right Freedom Party in Austria - it has just joined the conservative People's Party in a new coalition.
The Austrian Ambassador Paul Leifer was so uneasy at reports on the party and its leader Jorg Haider that he agreed to be interviewed by Sean O'Rourke on RTE's News at One.
Haider, he explained, was not the devil he was painted. (Denis Staunton wrote in The Irish Times yesterday of his notorious record of praise for Hitler and the Waffen SS.)
The ambassador cheerfully acknowledged some gaffes but compared the young leader to people showing off with their rhetoric in Irish pubs - he called Haider "an accomplished populist".
The Freedom Party had won 25 per cent of the votes in the last election, he said, because of its attacks on the practices of two old-established parties. The electorate wanted change.
And if international pressure - like the current wave of criticism by EU colleagues - resulted in fresh elections, Haider would be swept into power.
The unease provoked by the reports of Denis Staunton and others is unlikely to have been relieved by Paul Liefer's attempt at reassurance.
Indeed, listeners may have been struck by similarities with difficulties nearer home, what with accomplished populists, a weary electorate and a party with a whiff of brimstone climbing inexorably in the polls.
This is what may be called Bertie Ahern's Kerry nightmare - for the problems he faces in north Kerry are, in microcosm, a problem he could face before too long in the Republic as a whole.
It's an explosive mixture of guns, politics and financial skulduggery, to which Ahern and Fianna Fail are vulnerable because the party remains unreconstructed and the leader is unsure of his ground.
Kerry North is not only Denis Foley's constituency; it's Martin Ferris's. And if, by choice or perforce, Foley fails to hold the seat in the next election, Ferris could be his successor in the Dail.
A few more changes like that would leave Fianna Fail dependent on Sinn Fein support, whether in or outside coalition.
It's a prospect that alarms some in Fianna Fail. It's even more alarming to many outside the party and it adds to the importance of decommissioning in the eyes of ambitious southern republicans.
Fianna Fail's dilemma should - but doesn't - give the party and its supporters in the media a greater understanding of the problems that unionists generally and David Trimble in particular have had to face.
It certainly doesn't stop commentators talking as if all that's needed to sort out decommissioning is to throw a couple of ounces of Semtex at it.
For too long the pretence that, if you didn't say anything about the problem it would cease to exist, ran parallel with the assumption that any criticism of the paramilitaries was liable to bring the house down. In either case, the less said the better.
Now that the IRA cat is out of the republican bag and it's clear that the old view of the army council as the real government still holds good, political leaders are forced to look behind the masks.
Ahern spent most of Thursday "looking for clarity", then went to meet Tony Blair who said that what he sought was certainty.
Together they confirmed that clarity and certainty were essential if they were to save the institutions set up under the Belfast Agreement.
Clarity and certainty, however, could only have come from the IRA - the IRA had never said it would decommission - though it wanted to complete the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
However, the agreement, from beginning to end, speaks of a total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues and opposition to any use or threat of force by others.
But, as Ahern now knows, looking for clarity from the IRA is a bit like climbing trees in search of evidence about Ray Burke (while waving to Oliver Barry on the next branch).
It may even be like waiting for Denis Foley to explain how he suddenly realised there was something unusual about his bank account.
It happened when the statement arrived on headed paper with the heading chopped off and he was told that his money would be handed over in a brown paper bag by a man wearing a wig and a false moustache.
The man would be carrying a copy of the Irish Independent with its welcome for McCreevy's budget chopped off. And the bould Denis would make himself known by jiggling the last two pence in his pocket.
ALL OF which is as hard to credit as Gerry Adams's outrage when he heard Peter Mandelson's statement in the House of Commons on the introduction of legislation to provide for the suspension of the Northern institutions.
Adams claimed he was meeting IRA leaders at the time. And they were shocked to find themselves described as betraying the peace process. (He called an SDLP statement calling for decommissioning reprehensible.)
Other Sinn Fein leaders have been talking of blackmail, bullying and the marshalling of opinion abroad in opposition to their stance. Suddenly, even to some of their loyal supporters, it sounds hollow.
They'd tried to pretend that decommissioning wasn't part of the Belfast Agreement. But it was. They'd argued that in the Mitchell review there was neither a commitment to decommissioning nor an understanding that it would happen.
But when the Mitchell review took place in December it was clear to all concerned that devolution fell to the politicians and decommissioning to Gen John de Chastelain's international commission and the paramilitaries.
Almost immediately de Chastelain produced a timetable which included reports that would show the work had begun and how it was proceeding.
The first soon confirmed the paramilitary organisations had nominated interlocutors; it was a sign that the process of decommissioning was under way.
The second, intended to confirm work in progress, would be presented to the two governments by the end of January.
So there was an understanding that decommissioning would go ahead. Otherwise there would have been no point in producing the reports.
And the claim that January 31st was a deadline set by the unionists was false. It was a date set in the general's timetable and none of those who took part in the review could have been unaware of it.
What the republicans do about it remains to be seen.