The more anti-Sinn Féin elements in the DUP were happy to collaborate rather than kow-tow to Downing Street, writes Garret FitzGerald
It was a very "Irish solution". The DUP proved even more resistant to British pressure than Sinn Féin has in the past. Ian Paisley dropped all demands for further Sinn Féin action in relation to the police, because he was determined to face down the British government in its attempt to impose a deadline on him - and he clearly preferred to use Sinn Féin to bypass Tony Blair and Peter Hain.
And Sinn Féin was more than willing to collaborate in such an anti-British manoeuvre!
The more anti-Sinn Féin elements in the DUP were happy to collaborate in this process, preferring to receive this six-week fig-leaf delay from the hands of Sinn Féin than kow-tow to hated Downing Street.
This was a most elegant "Irish" solution to the DUP's problems, which augurs well for the future relationship of these two parties in government.
Ever since the abolition of Stormont exactly 35 years ago, the northern unionist sense of British betrayal - which is especially acute among these more extreme, loyalist unionists who have come increasingly to support the DUP - has been a powerful factor within that community. This reaction was aggravated in 1985 by the fact that it was the particular British prime minister upon whom unionists thought they could most rely, Margaret Thatcher, who signed the 1985 agreement with me.
Of course, the reality was that Margaret Thatcher was only a unionist in narrow British terms: fundamentally, she was a southern British nationalist who certainly resisted the idea of relinquishing any part of the United Kingdom, but who had no natural empathy with unionism in the North as such.
So, after signing the agreement with me on November 15th, 1985, when we went upstairs in Hillsborough Castle to celebrate our achievement with a glass of champagne, she reacted negatively to a reference I made to an arrangement by which our two permanent representatives to the EU were to propose to their colleagues that their states each make a substantial national contribution to a Northern Ireland peace fund, outside the framework of the EU budget.
I had personally secured the agreement of almost all other heads of government to this proposal. The instant reaction demonstrated how little unionist sentiment she shared: "What! More money for these people? Look at their roads! Look at their schools! I need that money for my people!"
The approach in Brussels was instantly cancelled, and Northern Ireland lost what might have been several hundred million pounds in aid.
The issue now is how the DUP and Sinn Féin, in conjunction with the two smaller parties with which they will share government, will work together in the executive.
My own belief is that at a personal level they will get on well. One should never underestimate the way in which working together in a government tends to lead to good cross-party relationships among at least some of those involved. Individuals often find they can get on better with some like-minded political opponents than they do with some of their own party colleagues.
Moreover, both of these main parties have a common economic agenda of seeking to promote Northern Ireland's economic growth - in particular by securing the chancellor of the exchequer's agreement to a reduction in the rate of corporation tax in Northern Ireland, which at present places it at a clear disadvantage vis-a-vis our state. (The chancellor will want to postpone any action on this at least until after the Scottish parliament election on May 3rd).
David Trimble was, I believe, inhibited from pressing this issue at the time of the Belfast Agreement. His essentially defensive stance, involving the elevation of political issues far above economic ones, prevented him from seeking anything that would differentiate Northern Ireland from Britain.
By contrast, a self-confident Ian Paisley now has no qualms about demanding from the British government a taxation reform that would place Northern Ireland on a par with the Republic!
It may also prove significant that both of the larger Northern Ireland parties, unlike most of our parties here, are firmly grounded on working-class support; they will both be addressing similar constituencies.
There is, however, one matter on which they may have difficulty in finding agreement. The Northern unionist community has long been suffering from a brain drain.
A significant part of this takes the shape of an outflow of Protestant third-level students to British - and particularly to Scottish - universities.
The great majority of these do not return after graduation - nor, in many cases, are they encouraged by their parents to come back to a divided society which is seen by them as being an increasingly cold place for Protestants.
By contrast, Catholics now outnumber Protestants in both Northern Ireland universities, and they are much less inclined to go to Britain for third-level education. Moreover, those who do go are more likely to return to the North.
In the short run, this process has been accelerating the growth of the Catholic share of the Northern population - a trend upon which Sinn Féin has seemed to place hopes of Irish reunification within a foreseeable future.
In fact, this a quite illusory hope, for polls have consistently shown that at least one-quarter of the Catholic population wish to remain in the United Kingdom. So, if there were to be a Border poll, there would now be a majority of about two-to-one in favour of remaining in the UK.
Moreover, the IRA did such damage to investment in the North that its output per head is now about one-sixth lower than per capita output in the Republic - the reverse of the situation that prevailed before the IRA campaign began.
The scale of the damage done by the IRA to any possibility of reunification has been such that, even if, by some miracle, the political obstacle to reunification disappeared, economic factors would now make it impossible.
The Republic could not afford, and its people would refuse to finance, the many billions that the 15-times larger British population now pays to maintain Northern Ireland's living standards.
And only the most extreme Sinn Féiner would vote for the drop of more than 20 per cent in living standards that unification would bring about in the absence of our taxpayers taking on this burden.
The trouble is that Sinn Féin's preoccupation with securing a Catholic majority in the North will tend to make it resistant to any measures that the DUP might wish to take to slow the Protestant brain drain. That could provide a future source of tension.