Hail and farewell to post-liberal Ireland, a country where the old, bruising battles between the moral certainties of traditional Catholic teaching and the permissive attitudes of certain ageing commentators were, albeit briefly, a thing of the past. That, we were repeatedly assured, was the real message of Mary McAleese's spectacular victory at the polls.
It showed that the voters now consider Ireland's "moral civil war" as "history", and so felt quite relaxed about electing a candidate known for her strictly orthodox Catholic views on social issues.
Less than a week elapsed between the inauguration at Dublin Castle and the harrowing story of the l3-year-old girl, pregnant as a result of rape, and whether she should be allowed to travel to Britain to have an abortion. In that few days the media demonstrated their awesome capacity for adjusting to the new realities of power.
I wish I had a fiver for every time I read either a) that our new President's views would have no impact on the progress of the liberal agenda or b) that it must be a healthy development for traditional Irish Catholic values, which had been denigrated and sneered at for so long, to be endorsed and given a proper weight at the centre of our public life.
The President has not yet commented on the case of the 13-year-old girl. Her predecessor, Mary Robinson, did make a brief intervention at the height of the X case in 1992 but Mrs McAleese may not want to become involved in such a controversial issue so early in her term at the Aras.
We do, however, have a fair idea of her views, with which many people in Ireland undoubtedly agree. In the wake of the X case Mrs McAleese wrote a letter to the Irish Press, which was co-signed by Dr Patricia Casey, arguing that the Supreme Court's decision to allow the girl to travel to England, "contradicted the express will of the Irish people, as well as decades of medical and legal practice, by permitting the direct abortion of the unwanted child". In her inauguration speech last week Mrs McAleese quoted the late Cearbhall O Dalaigh to the effect that presidents do not have policies, but presidencies can have themes. They also affect the climate of ongoing political debate. Most journalists would readily agree that Mary Robinson's views on the decriminalisation of homosexual acts, for example, influenced the way the media and politicians argued for change.
It's already possible to see a quite new confidence in the way spokespersons for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and other groups now argue that to allow the 13-year-old girl at the centre of this case to travel to Britain would mean that the State is authorising "the execution of an innocent child".
When this kind of language is being used in public debate, one can only begin to guess at the kind of pressure that has been put on the girl and her parents in private. The mother, a devout Catholic who has already sought help and counsel from her priest, believes her daughter should not carry this pregnancy to term. She has said she knows she will have to seek God's forgiveness if she helps her child to have an abortion.
Are there really people around who believe this is a proper way to talk to a woman who is experiencing such a crisis of conscience? In any civilised society this child, apparently the victim of a brutal rape, would have been taken to a hospital close to her home and a dilation and curettage would have been performed to ensure that she was not pregnant.
That, I am reliably informed by a liberal (yes, that word again) priest, is what happened when Belgian nuns were raped in the Congo and a merciful doctor decided they should not have to face the threat of pregnancy on top of violation.
That is probably what very many, perhaps even the majority, of Irish people would like to happen anyway. Over the past few days, in telephone calls to programmes like Liveline, one has heard the same view repeated over and over again. This is that the individual caller is totally opposed to abortion but that, in this particular case, he or she thinks the girl should be allowed to have her pregnancy terminated. They use the same arguments that we heard during the X case - she's only a child herself, she shouldn't have to go through this additional trauma, how will she be able to look after a baby? Many of them echo the words of the admirably honest Brendan McGahon during that last crisis, when he said that if the girl was his daughter he would have taken her to England without consulting anybody in authority.
And there, alas, is the rub. It isn't quite true to say that politicians have done nothing in the past five years. There have been referendums on the right to travel and access to information which have made abortion readily available to anybody with the money to pay for it.
As far as the middle classes are concerned, this item on the liberal agenda has been resolved. The problem is one of class, that this particular Irish solution is not available to the poor. The child of a traveller family, living in the most abject poverty by the side of the road, will need outside help to get the abortion so easily accessible to her better-off sister.
Since the State is pledged to protect her unborn child, this means in effect that we now expect the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens to uphold the ideal of Catholic Ireland for the rest of us.
It may be that this is the best we can manage, that social progress in Ireland will always be achieved in a crab-like fashion, so that we do not have to admit what change is really taking place.
But if we want to do better, and the many, many phone calls to RTE seem to indicate this, then we are going to have to begin to make a connection between the politicians for whom we vote and the kind of policies we want to see implemented. If we are now facing into another referendum on abortion, we have to start arguing the case for a change in the law which ensures that a 13-year-old girl, pregnant as the result of rape, is not left to carry the burden of our traditional Catholic values.
That means pressing individual politicians and parties on the issue and not just when it comes before us in the shape of a particularly heartrending story. It isn't enough to bask in the warm glow of cosy compassion by ringing RTE. Let us not mourn the brief life and sudden death of post-liberal Ireland. It was a mirage that, like the other myth of the Celtic tiger economy, radiated an often exclusive warmth. Far better for us to face back into the real Ireland, where we have to argue and work for the kind of political change that will extend the benefits of the liberal agenda to all our people, regardless of class or creed.