The recent suggestion in the Seanad by FG's Maurice Manning that it is about time we had an honours system has been taken up by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who said it was now appropriate that we show our maturity and it could all be in place for the Millennium. It is expected that he will discuss the matter with the other party leaders in the autumn. Indeed, says Senator Manning, an Irish honours system will happen with all party agreement or not at all. The idea was first mooted by Sean Lemass in the 1960s but, as revealed in recent state papers, was shot down by James Dillon and the FG front bench as inappropriate for a republic and was not then pursued by Fianna Fail. As a result, the Senator says, the only way a government can honour a worthy person is by asking a university to do so. He thinks a government should be able to do it itself and the recent conferring by Trinity of an honorary degree on George Mitch- ell led him to revive the debate. It is not incompatible with our status as a republic to bestow honours such as the Order of St Patrick or even the Grand Order of St Patrick, he says, and an independent group would decide - sparingly - what nominees were suitable. Apart from George Mitchell, the sort of person he has in mind include Seamus Heaney and the former Tory, now Labour MP, Peter Temple Morris. But, he adds, they would be earned honours and not for sale. Meanwhile, despite the rumours, it is not true, yet, that Senator Manning's best-selling political novel Betrayal is to become a film but he is being pursued by a Los Angeles publisher who wants to bring out a US edition and that could lead anywhere. At the moment he is completing his biography of Dillon and is seeking the secret British second World War files on Ireland which were kept back last week when all else was released under the 50-year rule. What skullduggery the British were up to, or planned in the event of a German invasion, would be wonderful to know. Manning has also written seven chapters of a new novel, provisionally called The Bishop's Bounty. It concerns a bishop who dies leaving a lot of unexplained money and contains murder and mystery and a solicitor's naughty wife.