"If it's not in when you're sober it won't come out when you're drunk," my late grandfather used to say. A parallel adage would be appropriate when it comes to election-time statements, both public and private . . . "If the matter doesn't irk you, you won't waste time agonising over it."

While the SDLP's Brid Rodgers seeks to divert our attention by railing against those who leaked her conversational opinion of presidential front-runner Mary McAleese, the salient point is that the lady from Portadown continues to "damn with faint praise" and resists the pressure to engage in any abject climbdown. Anyway, why should Mrs Rodgers feel an obligation to someone who, by her own admission to the Department of Foreign Affairs's Dympna Hayes, was "very pleased with Sinn Fein's performance in the general election and confident that they will perform even better in the local elections"?

Brid Rodgers cannot have been alone among her colleagues to have been concerned as they saw John Hume manoeuvre IRA/Sinn Fein into an electoral position which would ultimately call into question who really spoke for nationalists in Northern Ireland.

At the time, each would have been relieved to promote a more pragmatic evaluation on which both John Bruton and Bertie Ahern appeared to agree . . . that a vote for Sinn Fein was a vote for the IRA's violence.

Though no one has ever suggested that Mary McAleese is either a paid up member of Sinn Fein or that she supports IRA violence, the fact remains that the Republic's electorate is being asked to vote for someone who welcomed Sinn Fein electoral success at a time when there was no ceasefire in place.

Such an opinion, in the light of the murders of Garda Jerry McCabe and of two community policemen in Lurgan, is hardly in line with the new "bridge-building" image that Prof McAleese seeks to adopt.

So has Mary McAleese any track record of hands across the sectarian or political divides? Clearly her stewardship of her pro-vice-chancellorship at Queen's has been partisan and divisive, and being closeted in Clonard with Father Alex Reid and the editor of the pro-republican Irish News as part of a triumvirate pushing a Sinn Fein agenda is an unlikely route to cross-community effectiveness.

In contrast, one never had to scratch around to discover what Mary Robinson stood for. Her personal attempt to build bridges clearly demonstrated a courage which was recognised by unionists, many of whom would, at best, have been apathetic about the actual office of President. My own attendance at Mrs Robinson's inauguration was a personal acknowledgement of her efforts to interface with unionism.

There are others too, like Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eoghan Harris and Chris Hudson, who build bridges but, I suspect, we are unlikely to be allowed to hear much from them until the presidential election is past - their faces have been noticeably absent on RTE during the past week.

Political independence and personal courage will hardly feature too high in the current debate. The enthusiastic endorsement of McAleese by Adams and McGuinness causes no embarrassment to Corporate Ireland - fashionable nationalist upper-middle class Dublin which dominates at diplomatic level, government level and in certain sections of the media.

"Unreconstructed terrorists" at the table of democracy must have precedence over the interests of the ordinary voter in the Republic. No one will dare ask why politically aware Ms McAleese, if as staunch a nationalist as she claims to be, was able to remain uncommitted to Northern Ireland's one legitimate nationalist party for the past 25 years.

Yet journalist Suzanne Breen is wrong when she assumes that unionists won't want to see Mary McAleese elected as President. And John Alderdice is equally in error when he suggests that the law professor should withdraw from the race.

The reality, from my perspective, is that Corporate Ireland is consumed with an inherent hatred of all things British and all things unionist. It never deserved Mary Robinson and thwarted her ambition to accommodate a genuine, mutually respectful relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic - one based on trust and consent.

The current panic that reverberates around Iveagh House and Leinster House over leaked papers that would "wreck the Stormont political talks" gives clear evidence of the intrigue that bedevils efforts to build such a relationship.

Remember, I can write this as one who, perhaps more than any other of my tradition, has spent the past 16 years visiting and speaking in the Republic but who has, reluctantly, been forced to admit that the Dudley Edwardses, Harrises and Hudsons are an almost unique element there.

What I saw on RTE's Prime Time on Tuesday, when Eamonn Lawlor pressed Ms McAleese on her own statements and record, was a blatantly ethnic politician reduced to making a naked sectarian claim - so I'm a committed nationalist and Roman Catholic - what's wrong with that?

Nothing Mary, nothing - if that's it. But Mary Robinson would have been able to sense that there are ordinary rank and file people out there, too. And didn't you forget the very new "bridge-building" bit?

But I hope you win, Mary. Corporate Ireland needs and deserves you. Your election will help unionists to explain why any meaningful relationship with the Republic is, increasingly, becoming impossible.

Ken Maginnis of the UUP is the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone