I've always found the Horseshoe Bar in the Shelbourne hotel, Dublin, to be an unrivalled listening post, a reliable touchstone to understand what's going on in the Republic. Over the course of an average day, politicians, lawyers, journalists, business people, together with pseuds, hoods and "cute hoors" from virtually every calling, carouse in and out, exchanging often scurrilous gossip and valuable insider information.
Like the Europa in Belfast, it's a great cross-roads of intrigue and there's a wonderful superficial conviviality about it all.
"How's it going, Seamus?" one drinker asks.
"Jaysus, if it was going any better, I couldn't stick it," comes the reply.
But when Seamus has had his few pints, his character is comprehensively assassinated when he leaves.
No wonder I've long said that the difference between Belfast and Dublin is that in Belfast they generally stab you in the front.
I've regularly imbibed, chatted and eavesdropped in the Horseshoe over 30 years and have watched with admiration and envy how Dublin has been transformed from a European backwater city to a cosmopolitan and prosperous capital with a reputation topped only by Paris. It is the place to come to have the unique "Irish experience" and enjoy yourself.
At one time the bar was heavily populated by the "Tacateers" in their shiny mohair suits, up from the country in their mud-spattered Mercs to discuss grants and deals in Cong and Athenry with TDs and ministers.
Now it's young men and women, clad in Ar mani and Versace, the front-liners of the age of the Celtic Tiger, whose constantly trilling portables link them to lucrative deal-making around the clock and around the globe.
After 77 years of Partition, the two parts of this island have inevitably grown apart. Even Northern nationalists who would have the closest affinity with the South are more at ease with Partition and their improving position as traditional discrimination steadily evaporates in the North
A MAJOR thing which hasn't changed among these influential movers and shakers is the antipathy to Northern Ireland: the when-are-you-guys-going-to-get- things-sorted-out-up-there? entreaties; the it-must- be-terrible-living-in-a-war-zone platitudes; the it's- nothing-do-do-with-us attitude.
One day a man told me he read only half the paper - from the back - in case there was more bad news from the North.
Not surprising then that a couple of years ago the Northern Ireland Tourist Board discovered that four out of five people from the South had never spent a hotel night in the North.
After 77 years of Partition, the two parts of this island have inevitably grown apart. Even Northern nationalists who would have the closest affinity with the South are more at ease with Partition and their improving position as traditional discrimination steadily evaporates in the North.
The real genius of the Belfast Agreement, despite the widespread impression to the contrary so assiduously promoted within certain political parties, is that it underpins Partition. The truth is there will long continue to be, by consent, a disunited Ireland.
The reality is that Northern Ireland would now be a dreadful burden on the shiny new Republic. In all, it costs Britain some £3 billion a year to subsidise it. That's the difference between what Northern Ireland pays in tax and what Britain spends. It is also the case that public spending in the North is one-third higher per capita than in England, Scotland or Wales.
A more pertinent point is whether the Republic is really open to the North. Remarkably, the Republic takes only 10 per cent of Northern Ireland's exports and the business links are completely underdeveloped.
FOR many Northerners, there is now a certain smugness in the Republic about the economic success and a marked reluctance to acknowledge the role of others like the US and Britain in helping to create this.
Overwhelmingly, the most generous contributor has been the EU, as evidenced by the Euro symbol displayed on what seems like every gleaming new building and every sleek bypass and public facility throughout the Republic.
US aid, through the International Fund for Ireland, has similarly transformed the so-called Border counties: ramshackle old hotels have been modernised and now boast swimming pools and gymnasiums.
Convoys of lorries packed with mushrooms drive to Britain every night and the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell canal expensively straddles the Border as a symbol of what foreign aid can bring.
Yet perhaps the most persuasive sign that the divisions between the people of the North and South are as deep as those within Northern Ireland has come over these last scandal-ridden months.
The body politic in the Republic may be hugely engaged in affairs of the North but the traffic is very much one way. The people of the North have taken little interest in and do not understand the beef swindles, the downfall of Charlie Haughey and the dubious goings-on in the planning and legal processes.
Different priorities. Places apart. People divided. A disunited Ireland, indeed.
Mary Holland returns next week