I am optimistic that a solution will be found to the current impasse over the implementation of the Good Friday agreement.
I believe that at a profound level, the political leaders and general population have accepted that the Good Friday agreement is the most secure way forward for everyone.
The unionist community knows that prolonged instability in Northern Ireland will accentuate the emigration of young educated people from their community, in a way that is corrosive of their political and cultural position on this island. Political stability will create more job opportunities and will stabilise both communities.
The whole nationalist community in Ireland has now accepted John Hume's thesis that agreement and consent are the only durable methods by which their political and cultural objectives can be achieved.
In recent days, Sinn Fein leaders have truthfully drawn attention to the extent of the concessions they have made on constitutional issues. Anyone who remembers the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and its failed attempts to get Sinn Fein to accept the principle of consent, will understand the genuinely seismic shift that was made when Sinn Fein accepted the Good Friday agreement which enshrined the principle of consent and provided for a change in Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution to give it effect.
It is unfortunate that in the lead-up to the recent deadline set by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, so little was made of the significance of this profound change in republican thinking by unionists, by republicans themselves and by the two governments. If that broader context had been painted for the community of Northern Ireland, there might have been less of a fixation on the issue of the timing of decommissioning.
Decommissioning, of course, is a real issue. All participants in the talks committed themselves to it in their acceptance of the Mitchell Principles and in the Good Friday agreement. It is also a practical necessity if trust is to be built and if the means of death and destruction are not to fall into the wrong hands.
But for constitutional democrats, the issue must be one of political and military intentions rather than detailed modalities. The issue is not really one of whether decommissioning happens before or after the establishment of the executive. It is one of whether the IRA, the UVF, and other paramilitaries accept the political necessity of decommissioning, have decided to do it, and will forbear from all threats (implicit or otherwise) of a reversal of that policy to achieve further political concessions. By accepting the Good Friday agreement, Sinn Fein has come a long way towards accepting the political necessity of decommissioning. The only difficulty is that the IRA has not said it will ever actually do it. Nor, might it be said, did the loyalist paramilitaries make any useful contribution. They stuck to their intransigent position that they would not even start decommissioning until after the IRA had already started. David Ervine and the other loyalist leaders made no visible effort to change that position and gave no help to those who were seeking a more advanced statement from the IRA on the matter.
Direct discussion between David Ervine and Gerry Adams on the demilitarisation process would be very useful, because the UVF and other loyalist organisations have escaped proper public scrutiny of their own failure to give any lead on taking the gun out of politics by making the first move, rather than insisting that they would only make the last move.
Within the republican community, time might be taken to reflect on what it has actually achieved and on whether its success is not such that it no longer needs to maintain an "army".
THE common objective of Sinn Fein and the IRA has long been the self-determination of their future by the Irish people of the 32 counties.
Republicans argued that the last time the Irish people self-determined their future was when they elected a majority of Sinn Fein MPs on separatist and abstentionist platforms in December 1918. They argued that the Treaty of 1921 was not in accord with this 1918 mandate. This justified their continued armed struggle, in their view.
The fact is now that by winning inclusive negotiations and a comprehensive agreement endorsed by the Irish people in a 32-county referendum, republicans actually won what they had been fighting for since 1921.
Many people who fight wars have a tendency to go on fighting unnecessarily even after they have, objectively speaking, achieved their original aims. I think republicans may be running the risk of making that mistake if they insist on maintaining their "army" in place, even after its original aims have been achieved.
We in the South are more than mere spectators or facilitators of the peace process. We will, at times, have a leadership role to play.
In recent times, unionists have sometimes come to trust taoisigh in Dublin even more than they trust prime ministers in London, whom they may suspect of putting "mainland"' interests first.
Unionists live in Ireland, not in Britain. Ultimately, their greatest security comes, not from British support, but from a durable guarantee of their identity and political position from Irish nationalism. David Trimble, through the Good Friday agreement, did more to achieve that than any previous leader of unionism.
In its reaction to the current crisis, Southern nationalist opinion could do much that could either help or hinder that building of trust between Ulster unionism and Irish nationalism.
A sectarian reaction which instinctively blames the other side of the traditional divide, without trying to understand its fears, is something I have opposed. I have always gone out of my way to do the opposite.
I have done so because I believe that unity of political purpose in Ireland will only be achieved when the larger community on the island (the nationalists) goes out of its way to show understanding for the smaller community (the unionists). The real partitionists are those whose instinctive reaction is automatically to blame the intransigence of the other side for every crisis.
I believe that a unity of political purpose on this island can never be achieved by any form of coercion, nor do I believe it can ever be achieved by a demographic "victory". The idea that the national question would be resolved if, through differential birth and emigration rates, nationalists come to outnumber unionists in Northern Ireland is mistaken. Such a "victory" without a full-hearted political accommodation would just switch the boot from one foot to the other, but without ending the match.
The genius of the process that led to the Good Friday agreement is, as Dick Spring has pointed out on a number of occasions, that it guarantees the political identity of both communities indefinitely regardless of movements in political demographics.
That is why politicians must put last week's disappointments behind them quickly and get back to work.
John Bruton TD is leader of Fine Gael