IT'S great that we have peace in Ireland, and that, for all but a hard-line minority, the national question has been settled, or at least shelved, writes Frank McNally. But it's depressing to see that, 35 years on, there is still no progress on another great North-South question: why does butter cost twice as much in the Republic?
According to an article by Paul Cullen in yesterday's edition, a pound of Kerrygold butter can currently be purchased for €1.18 in Lisburn, compared with €2.38 in Dublin. And shocking as this is, it gives me a strong sense of déjà vu. Because, allowing for inflation, it is more or less the same situation that existed when I was a small boy in Monaghan.
I know what I'm talking about. Back then, I served as an accomplice in a minor butter-smuggling operation run by older relatives whom I'd better not identify in case they disinherit me.
The operation involved us occasionally driving the six-and-a-half miles to South Armagh and thence down a narrow side-road, where there was a grocery shop called "Paddy Larry's". There we would buy a whole box of butter - 24 pounds - and very little else, as I remember, before fleeing back across the Border the way we came.
The shop in question was accessed by what was almost certainly an "unapproved road", as they used to be called.
I never knew what that meant exactly, apart from the fact that there were no checkpoints. But it added to the thrill. Like Robert Frost, I too have followed the road less travelled and it has made all the difference to me as well. In the early 1970s, as now, the saving on butter could be up to 50 per cent.
I hasten to say the butter was for personal use. There were seven children in our family; a box probably kept us going for only a month at the most (this was long before the discovery of cholesterol). And besides, nearly everybody was at it. There would have butter-related tailbacks - butter jams, if you like - at the Border at the time, except that not everybody had a car.
And where cars were lacking, others took up the slack. I remember a school-bus driver - since departed this world, may he rest in peace - who ran a popular local service distributing boxes of Northern butter as well as students. It was the sort of lesson in hard economics that they didn't teach you at school.
Widespread as the trade was, however, it was muttered - then as now - that there was something unpatriotic about it. Questions were asked in the Dáil and the Government took a dim view. It wasn't quite the Devil's Buttermilk we were said to be supping, but it was close.
As a 10-year-old, I'm sure I wrestled long and hard with the ethical issues involved, including whether my father, as a small dairy farmer and lifelong Fianna Fáil member, should buy his butter anywhere except in the local jurisdiction. And I'm sure the answer was obvious.
Even as moderate nationalists, we resented the Border. We had never asked for it. It was just put there, cutting us off from our natural hinterland. Furthermore, we knew that the Boundary Commission, which would probably have liberated Paddy Larry's, at least, had been a stitch-up from the start.
How could it possibly be unpatriotic to patronise the business of people we believed to be fellow-citizens of Ireland, who just happened to be separated from us by a gerrymandered partition, unrecognised by the Constitution - articles 2 and 3 of which continued to insist that Paddy Larry's was rightfully ours? On the contrary, when you thought about it, it was our patriotic duty to buy cross-border butter, and support our benighted fellow countrymen. That it saved us money was a bonus. Unlike our benighted fellow countrymen, we knew the joys of living in the Free State. But however free it might be, it wasn't cheap - even then.
Concepts of patriotism have changed somewhat in the intervening years, as has nearly everything else. Articles 2 and 3 have been amended and the consent principle enshrined. Border checkpoints have disappeared, even on approved roads. The DUP is sharing power with Sinn Féin.
Britain's cheap food policy has gone, and the Republic and the North are subject to the same EU agricultural policies. And yet still, somehow, butter costs twice as much in Dublin as in Belfast - even butter that was made in the Republic and faced the added costs of export before getting up there.
It's one of the great mysteries. I rang the Irish Dairy Board yesterday for explanation, but I am very little the wiser as a result.
• Pending the much-need development of all-island economy, you could do worse this week than participate in an all-island charity auction for the Tractor-on-Tour initiative, previously mentioned in this space.
The auction, which starts later today and continues until December 7th, follows a 32-county round-Ireland tractor drive to raise money for the Republic's first children's hospice, and to support similar institutions in the North. Among the many unusual items for sale are a Northern Ireland football jersey signed by the Chuckle Brothers, Dr Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. Further details on www.tractorontour.ie.
• fmcnally@irish-times.ie