So, what exactly have the royals ever done for us?

Since the mid-19th century the royals have had a surprisingly good relationship with Ireland. Queen Victoria herself had mixed emotions about the Irish; she never forgave Dublin Corporation for refusing to pass a motion of sympathy when Albert died, so she blocked plans for an Irish Balmoral (Meath's Killeen Castle being the favoured site), writes Jim Duffy

And, suspecting that her mother's bullying Irish lover, Sir John Conroy, was her own real father didn't help. Yet she adored Killarney, her visits putting it on the tourist map. And she personally donated the equivalent of €100,000 for famine relief, not the mythical £5 sometimes suggested.

Her son, Edward VII, was a committed hibernophile, feeling so at ease here that he once slipped out of the Viceregal Lodge with his wife, Alexandra, and their oldest son, the Duke of Clarence, to walk without bodyguards through Monto in inner-city Dublin. Comically, all three were soaked when a washerwoman, not watching what she was doing, tossed a bucket of dishwater out a door, hitting the three strangers outside, then insisting that they come in to dry themselves and have tea.

On another occasion, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York (later George V), again without bodyguards, went to lay flowers at Parnell's grave at Glasnevin.

But the ultimate royal hibernophile was George V, who in his biographer's words saw himself as the "protector of his Irish, as well as his British, subjects". George's interventions in support of Ireland are legendary; his 1914 Buckingham Palace peace conference on home rule, his criticism of Britain's reaction to the Easter Rising, his support for the 1917 Irish Convention, on which he was briefed by notes from Sir Horace Plunkett and its secretary, Erskine Childers.

During the War of Independence, when the British halted executions due to a legal case, he pressurised Lloyd George not to restart them. His criticism of the Black and Tans was so well known that one American newspaper speculated whether he would sack Lloyd George's government over the issue. Lloyd George felt it necessary to call one supposed royal quote, "I cannot have my people killed in this manner" a "complete fabrication".

And the king pleaded with the Government to explore suggested compromises to save Terence MacSwiney's life and end his hunger-strike. But his most dramatic public intervention occurred in 1921 when, working with South Africa's General Smuts - who was in contact with both de Valera and Collins - and Lloyd George, the king helped push a deeply reluctant Tory-dominated cabinet to approve a reconciliation speech for delivery at the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament, in preference to Bonar Law's "war-on-republicans" proposed alternative.

George's moving speech at Belfast City Hall calling for peace, reconciliation and forgiveness in Ireland, changed Anglo-Irish relations overnight. From it flowed the truce and the treaty negotiations.

He got involved there, too, calming Lloyd George when he took offence at various rather undiplomatic messages from President de Valera. One key ultimatum from Lloyd George was almost completely rewritten on King George's advice, while Robert Barton waited to pick it up, the king having warned Lloyd George to avoid appearing to bully Ireland.

George had a very good relationship with the Irish Free State. In the early 1930s the Irish asked for two Commonwealth firsts: direct access to the king without going through British ministers, and Ireland's own State seal. Both implied constitutional equality under the crown for Ireland and Britain. Britain was horrified but the king agreed, presenting the new saorstat seal to Paddy McGilligan in a one-to-one meeting. In 1932, George diffused the row between de Valera and Governor-General James McNeill by getting Dev to withdraw his request for McNeill's dismissal and McNeill to bring forward his planned retirement to Dev's desired dismissal date.

Elizabeth II has also shown a longterm interest in Ireland. She was strongly supportive of President Robinson's ground-breaking visits to Britain, inviting her to Buckingham Palace (a first) and co-hosting a public engagement with the President (another first).

In the 1990s a request that the palace support a unionist campaign to force Queen's University Belfast to keep playing God Save the Queen at graduations was shot down in a response that all but accused unionists of using the anthem to humiliate nationalists.

In the mid 1990s Mary McAleese, then Pro Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University, to her astonishment found herself, as a leading nationalist, being invited to have lunch with the queen to discuss Ireland. And more remarkably, the Northern nationalist emerged deeply impressed by the queen's interest in, and concern for, Ireland. (McAleese called Elizabeth, who like her read Seamus Heaney poetry, a "dote".)

In the 1880s, the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Earl Spencer, told Queen Victoria that the royals had hardly spent a week in Ireland since the days of the Tudors. The 20th century royals made up for that, becoming some of the most hibernophile members of the British establishment.

If the question is "so what have the modern royals done for us?" the answer is, quite a lot, actually.