The tone in talks between Sinn Féin and the DUP changed over the summer, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
As a general principle, power is the politician's aphrodisiac. However, so far the opportunity for Northern parties to actually run a country has not been sufficiently stimulating for the DUP and Sinn Féin to strike a deal. Yet it's not all discouraging, as the summer has proved.
Northern Secretary Peter Hain, fresh from his holidays, yesterday kicked off the latest stage of the long-running attempt to persuade Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams that they should do business together.
So, it's off to another big house across the water - this time in Scotland - for all the parties in the second week of next month, with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair playing hosts.
There are almost three months to the British and Irish governments' deadline of November 24th to establish whether the DUP could stomach being in power with Sinn Féin. Whether a deal can be struck by then seems doubtful, but while we might not be there by then, we might be close.
On a basic human level it is clear that if devolution is to be restored, the DUP and Sinn Féin must agree to be at least semi-respectful to each other. And under the radar there was some surprising engagement between the two parties during the summer.
While Mr Hain and many of the rest of us were on our summer break, the Assembly's Programme for Government committee - with the main parties, including Alliance, represented - met through June, July and August, and is still meeting each working day.
And yes, there was real dialogue.
Consider this little exchange at the August 16th meeting of the group. It was after Arlene Foster of the DUP asked her colleague, Jim Wells, joint chairman of the committee with Sinn Féin's Francie Molloy, whether members must formally declare interests at every meeting.
Jim Wells: "Only if it is a member's first appearance at a meeting, and he or she is a member of the Policing Board, a district policing partnership, MI5 or the security forces."
Fred Cobain (Ulster Unionist Party): "Do not say that or everyone will put their hand up."
Gerry Kelly (Sinn Féin): "Welcome to MI5."
Danny Kennedy (UUP): "You said that you would not say that."
Jim Wells: "If you are being paid by the intelligence services, you must declare it."
Peter Weir (DUP): "It is purely voluntary work."
Okay, it's not hilarious, but in that minor bantering there is just a little sense of some common humanity breaking through, a sense that when bitter opponents talk to each other face to face it is impossible for them to persistently act like automatons.
The Hansard for these debates is available by working your way through the Northern Ireland Assembly website (www.niassembly.gov.uk).
Comparing debates, say, for June and July with the debates of August, the difference in tone is clearly discernible.
In earlier discussions the main adversaries - Rev William McCrea and Ian Paisley jnr for the DUP and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness - are predictably nasty to each other.
There's the usual stuff: about "Sinn Féin/IRA"; references to Mr McGuinness's claim that the DUP alleged he was in MI5 to set him up for assassination; jnr that Sinn Féin's chief negotiator is guilty of slander; there's talk of why Mr McCrea stood shoulder to shoulder with LVF leader Billy Wright in Portadown . . . And so on.
You could write the script yourself. It is entertaining if you enjoy or are unfamiliar with such rows but it is what people in is what people in Northern Ireland have been confronted with day after day on the airwaves, in the Assembly when it sits, in the local newspapers, in council chambers - all utterly repetitive, all equally unproductive.
Yet if you fast forward through the weeks the the tone gradually changes.
That is partly because during this period it seems that Mssrs McGuinness, Paisley jnr and McCrea also took a break, leaving the work to people who did not grate so badly on each other.
Yet it is also partly because the mood genuinely improved the more the parties spoke to each other on the programme committee and its sub-group economy committee.
It is crucial here not to exaggerate the level of contact or to suggest some warmth of relationship between the DUP and Sinn Féin.
It is also important to remember that DUP leader Ian Paisley was not at the talks and appears to have been out of the political loop during the summer.
In typically capricious fashion, he could return from his vacation and scuttle progress to date with more "sackcloth and ashes" references or ultimatums about republican surrender.
SDLP member on the Programme for Government committee, Seán Farren, who would have a reasonably neutral view of proceedings, perhaps best reflected the progress made during the summer.
"There is no doubting that Sinn Féin and the DUP have moved beyond the dialogue of the deaf," he said. For the first time we had sustained dialogue taking place between all the parties in the same room, discussing the same agendas.
It did not resolve anything but we all heard each other's excuses, aspirations, criticisms and hopes for the future."
Indeed, the committee did not agree anything. Yet it discussed all the main issues, sometimes in detail: creating a competitive economy, policing, how criminal justice should be administered, ministerial accountability. No one could argue that the DUP members did not know their briefs, or did not fully participate in the question-and-answer sessions, and the same with the other parties.
While there was not much consensus, there was a certain distilling of the issues, an identification of where the main difficulties lay, focusing on the problems that must be surmounted in Scotland.
All of this is important because it means that the politicians will have shaped the Scottish agenda and gone some distance in examining how key matters might be resolved.
Yet no matter how successful the Scottish talks, there will still be loose ends.
For example, it is virtually certain there will be no Sinn Féin agreement on policing by then.
Yet there could be the makings of a deal by November 24th, a feeling that one last push in late winter or early spring could compel Ian Paisley to forge a historic agreement with Gerry Adams, with or without the Assembly in cold storage.