Of mad cows and Englishmen

These are momentous days in Ireland. No doubt it's premature to say so, but there's almost a feeling that we're living through the end of history. From the IRA announcing the start of decommissioning, to RT╔ presenting a critically acclaimed comedy drama, we are witnessing events many of us thought would never happen. Not in our lifetimes, anyway.

Sure, most experts now claim they knew decommissioning would come, eventually - it was only a question of when. But Bachelors Walk was a bolt out of the blue, I don't care what anyone says. How Dublin turned into the sexy, guilt-free city portrayed in the series is a mystery to most of us living here (on the evidence of the programme, the Liffey boardwalk was a big liberating factor), but the development is no less welcome.

Political events this week recalled the occasion in 1998 when Tony Blair famously remarked that it was not a day for "sound bites", and then, with barely a pause, said he felt "the hand of history" on his shoulder. As bites go, that one had bigger teeth than Blair himself. And yet it was a relief at the time to know that history, which had been leaning on us long enough, was using the British prime minister as a prop for a change.

Anyway, it's clear now that we have entered an era of closure on this island. Even as some people were still worrying about the emotions stirred up by the recent State funerals, it emerges that the IRA was destroying weapons. North and South, meanwhile, various issues from our past continue to be teased out by independent inquiries; the newest of them concerning allegations of mistreatment in State institutions - an attempt, in a sense, to take the nuns out of Irish politics.

Bertie Ahern's personality is perfectly suited to these times. There was an interesting moment on Wednesday when, in a carefully planned accident, he and Gerry Adams posed for the cameras in front of a portrait of Padraig Pearse as they jointly accepted the title of Republican of the Year 2001. And whatever your politics, you couldn't but reflect on the contrast between the Taoiseach's ultra-cautious, consensus-building manner and the approach of the 1916 leaders.

Had Bertie been in charge in the GPO, he would probably have set up an all-party committee to examine whether the time was right to summon the children to the flag and strike for freedom. The feasibility of seizing the moment and the question of whether the name of God and of the dead generations could somehow be incorporated into the project would have been referred to consultants.

But in his own time, the Taoiseach's subversive tactic of agreeing with everybody has proved highly effective, creating fears in Leinster House that the Opposition may not last the full term. If he wins another five years of forgiveness and consensus-building, we as a people may run out of issues.

With the Robert Emmet bicentenary approaching, the matter of the unwritten epitaph will probably arise. But Bertie is liable to come up with an agreed form of words, and that'll be the end of that. There'll be nothing left then except local grudges. And maybe we'll have a truth and reconciliation commission to sort out those: establishing once and for all who locked the referee in the boot, how Roscommon people got a name for stealing sheep, and so on.

Speaking of sheep. Relations between Ireland and Britain have never been better, as Blair acknowledged the other day. And a sign of the new maturity between the islands is that I cancelled the column originally planned for this week. This would have concerned the embarrassing mix-up by British scientists in which, it emerged recently, a five-year project to detect BSE in sheep has been undermined by the fact that the brains tested may not have been those of sheep - an important requirement for the study - but of cattle.

I had planned to suggest, facetiously, that the confusion occurred due to faulty shelf-storage. Which would have allowed the headline: "British scientists rack their brains, but get racks mixed up." The old saying, "to err is human, but a mistake this big is bovine", would probably have featured. But the general thrust of the piece would have been that, had this happened in Ireland, we'd never hear the end of it, whereas, thank God, it had happened in England, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I would probably have concluded with the message "nah, nah, na-nah, nah!" or words to that effect. Such a column would have been inappropriate, however. Because we're over all that now.

fmcnally@irish-times.ie