THE authorities in this State have defined policy on sieges, along the lines that force is only to be used as a last resort, where physical injury is happening to hostages or there is a threat to the public. The policy has, so far, been successful.
In other countries, negotiation is seen as a waste of time.
Russia, which had no real experience in the type of advanced policing techniques available in the West, chose to deal with the spate of hostage taking by criminals it encountered after the collapse of the Soviet system in a more direct fashion.
Crack military corps, which no longer had any real military function, were given responsibility for sorting out hostage crises.
In a series of spectacularly daring exercises, the Russian soldiers and police officers literally threw themselves into the line of fire between hostages and gunmen.
Injuries were high, particularly to the hostage takers, who were inevitably shot dead, but the strategy eventually paid off as hostage taking has declined dramatically.
Within the US, policy on hostage crises seems to divide on either side of the Mason Dixon Line. In the north, peaceful negotiation is the primary objective. In some southern states there is still a degree of support for the "blazing guns school of hostage crisis settlement."
The French, too, have tended to insert crack teams where there is any major threat to hostages and even a slight chance of success by interdiction.
The elite French military force, the CIGN, became a symbol of national pride when it stormed the Air France Airbus captured by Algerian gunmen in 1995.
In the same year, the French forces faced an appalling scenario when a deranged gunman took over an infants' playgroup in Paris.
The threat was such that negotiation was only used as a means to allow the anti siege unit enough time to set their plan in place, storm the building and kill the gunman.
The elite forces, like the CIGN, the Army Ranger Wing (ARW) in this State and the Special Air Services (SAS) in Britain train to extraordinarily high standards for situations like the aircraft hijacking and the siege in the playgroup. Stealth and speed ensure that sieges end in violent activity lasting only seconds.
Upon entering a room or aircraft, the soldiers can isolate and shoot dead the hostage takers almost before they have time to think about raising their weapons.
Fortunately, this State has yet to encounter a situation where the services of the ARW have been deemed necessary.
However, there are circumstances where such soldiers would almost certainly have to be put into action. If this State encountered a situation where a deranged gunman held children hostage, there would be irresistible pressure to move from negotiation to intervention.
The two sieges which have occurred here in the past fortnight both came within the bounds of negotiable settlement, although only just.
The authorities at Mountjoy chose to negotiate right through the worst hours of their siege when the prisoners were threatening to strangle their hostages or inject them with infected blood from a syringe. If a hostage had been injured, however, the prison governor, Mr John Lonergan, would have immediately ended the negotiations and used force.
The decision of the prison authorities to opt for a non lethal use of force, involving officials from the Northern Ireland Prison Service with thermal lances, to cut through the steel door, and then to send in prison officers with truncheons was privately derided by Army sources.
However, the prison authorities had to take into account the overall effect a lethal intervention at the Separation Unit in Mountjoy might have had on the wider prison system and on future sieges.
The situation in Bawnboy, Co Cavan, it emerged, stemmed from a tragic set of circumstances which, if appreciated earlier, could have been completely avoided.
Gardai were intent on securing a peaceful, negotiated settlement from the outset. The fact that the man involved in the siege had access to three rifles and a handgun, however, ensured that a major security operation was in place if the talking failed.
In the event, the negotiating skills of the Garda team proved successful. However, as officers involved in the operations separately observed, negotiation is the ideal way of hostage situation resolution, but only up to a point.