We know what happened over the last four decades, so just what was Saturday's march down O'Connell Street meant to achieve? asks Jim Dougal
So there goes another €10 million down the political drain. And the shopkeepers of central Dublin and the reputation of a modern European City have been damaged. But only for a short time, I suspect. The shopkeepers will soon recover, as will Dublin's reputation.
Those who have suffered in the North and elsewhere through 40 years of violence will take much longer to mend.
Here, the tit-for-tat verbal battle across the radio airwaves continues interminably, often in squalid terms with each new caller criticising the last.
One senior unionist politician had hardly arrived back from Dublin when he told a BBC Radio Ulster programme that the republican protest, which led to the abandonment of the Love Ulster parade on Saturday, was a sad reflection of society in the Republic. "If the government of Ireland wants to be a modern western European democratic state, it should listen to the views of others," he said.
This argument suggests that the Republic is inherently an undemocratic state which purposefully nurtures within it the thugs who subverted the intentions of a rally by those who love Ulster.
It is clear who Love Ulster represents - the survivors and victims of IRA terrorism - but I have some difficulty in discerning the precise overall aim of Saturday's rally.
Whose views were they hoping to influence? And to what end? Were they simply demonstrating that they too have suffered?
There can be few on this island not aware of what the last four decades and more have meant. How was a parade down O'Connell Street going to provide an answer?
However, the right of the loyalists to parade peacefully and lawfully, without interference, must be respected. Their hurt must be acknowledged. The vast majority of the people of the South were happy to let it be. The proposed parade did however manage to provoke a small minority longing to be provoked.
It is such a pity that the preparation by the authorities was so inadequate, and that the march could not proceed. Mindless bigotry, violence and bully boy tactics, assisted by the looters, won the day.
The Garda Síochána bent over backwards to ensure the safety of the marchers, sustaining several injuries in the process. Are they not a more accurate reflection of the modern democratic Irish State?
Were the bandsmen then provoked into playing The Sash? And this, at a time when the guardians of the State were doing their utmost to protect them. It was a long way to go to be provoked.
For many years I worked closely with colleagues in the Republic of Ireland. Sometimes I found a desire on their part that the problem of Northern Ireland would simply disappear and let them get on with their lives. After Saturday, is it any wonder? However, I always found an anger and sympathy for what their counterparts in the North, on both sides, had to suffer. There was a great resentment that some terrorists purported to act in their name.
To attempt to create an analogy between the Love Ulster parade and a march on the Shankill Road by people who have suffered from the loyalist paramilitary bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, as some have, is mischief-making.
Love Ulster, which by its very title would seem to exclude many Catholics, wanted to march in the centre of the city.
Unionists and nationalists alike have a capacity to believe that only their version of events reflects the truth.
Was the IRA, when it killed relatives and injured some of the people who wanted to march in Dublin, representative of the majority of nationalists north and south of the Border? Of course not. Neither were those who killed at La Mon or Enniskillen or carried out other countless acts of wanton murder and destruction.
Loyalist murderers of Catholics were not representative of the unionist Protestant community. And neither were those who jeered at and threw urine and pornography in the faces of Catholic children going to school at Ardoyne in north Belfast.
The past will always be with us and until we learn from it and, most of all, learn how to deal with it, the distrust and hostility will continue.
Northern Ireland is used to commissions and quangos. They make up a major part of the government.
Isn't it time the people of Northern Ireland took responsibility for and control of the past?
A commission could be established under suitable and agreed chairmanship, comprising representatives of people who have suffered, and in some cases those who have caused much suffering and the wider community, to decide precisely how to deal with the past.
It could be its remit to establish how best people can live with what has happened and go forward.
On Sunday I switched to Downtown Radio where presenter Harry Castles was fielding calls from throughout Northern Ireland about the scenes in Dublin.
Towards the end of the programme he spoke to a man from Bristol in England who had been listening on the internet.
"Do you realise," he said, "that all this can be seen and heard throughout the world on the web? You are a disgrace. In the Nineties you got peace but you haven't moved on. Why can't you move on?"
It is an important question.
Wouldn't it be a more comprehensive tribute to those who have suffered and died if the people of this island found a way to do so?
• Jim Dougal is a political journalist and broadcaster, former Northern editor of RTÉ and former Northern Ireland political editor of the BBC