President felt she had fulfilled her mission

THE clues to what was going on inside Mrs Robinson's head as she decided not to seek re-election as President are to be found in her inaugural address made, almost seven years ago, on December 3rd, 1990.

"In a way that was her agenda, she didn't really know it at the time, or didn't see it that way, but that's what it was," says a friend. A few thoughts and phrases picked from that speech illustrate the point.

The new President said the Ireland she would be representing was "a new Ireland, open, tolerant, inclusive". Her role was to represent this State but "beyond our State, there is a vast community of Irish emigrants. .. I will be proud to represent them," she added.

Still again, there was another community, "the local community, I will represent them", said the President. Separately, she made reference to her desire to see women "written back into history".

She also spoke of a "confident sense of our Irishness" - a non-threatening Irishness that found expression in culture. Elsewhere in the speech, the non-threatening nature of this self-confidence found an echo when she said: "I want to extend the hand of friendship and of love to both communities in the other part [of this island]."

And a final point from the address pointed to her wish to travel widely. "I would like, on your behalf, to contribute to the international protection and promotion of human rights." A desire she clearly retains.

For much of the past two months, the President wrestled with the question of whether to seek re-election - in the full knowledge that if she did, no one would stand against her and a second term was assured. She did not consult widely, taking counsel only from her immediate family and close friends - not more than six or eight people in all.

What weighed on her mind was whether she had accomplished her agenda - the items identified in her inaugural speech - and whether there was anything more that could be done on Northern Ireland.

"As she thought about it, it was almost like doing her accounts, going down through the ledger - what had been done, what had not. Northern Ireland was a big, factor. Her vision was another, said one friend.

"On the ledger she was working out what had been accomplished and what could be accomplished in another seven years. She knew she would be unopposed and didn't like that. She believes the President should be elected. She came in - squeaked in, let's be clear - but with a mandate nonetheless to develop the office. That mandate to be President has to be renewed."

But how do Mrs Robinson and her friends see the ledger of the seven years, the pluses and minuses?

In Northern Ireland - visited 15 times - they have no doubt that the outstretched hand of love and friendship has been grasped. "On Northern Ireland," says a friend, "she was able to facilitate networking and the fact is that today, there is never an event where she will not be told;: `And President, you'll be glad to meet our colleagues from Northern Ireland...' There has been a coming together - across the Border and within Northern Ireland - that is not threatening to either side.

"When she spoke in her inaugural address of wanting people to have a confident sense of lrishness she meant something that was non-territorial. She once said an American can feel 100 per cent American but Irish as well. She met a loyalist man in New York who described himself as Irish as well as British but said he could not do that back home.

"She felt the American example could apply here. Someone could be 100 per cent British and feel themselves at least partly Irish as well."

To Mrs Robinson, being a President for local communities was all about empowerment - particularly empowerment of women: "the people who have held Irish society together but about whom the history is not written, the people O'Casey wrote about", as another friend put it.

It was a deliberate policy that when she visited a small community, she rarely took a scripted speech. She researched beforehand what the group was about and than "often used their own words and thoughts back at them". In this way, she affirmed what they were doing, made them feel special. That was the theory, at least, and judging by the reception she kept getting, it worked.

Her inaugural reference to Irish immigrants - the D word had yet to appear - found an echo in her address to the Dail and Seanad. "After her Dail speech on the diaspora, I heard people saying `What do you do? Take two with a glass of water?' Before that speech, the word might have appeared in a newspaper once a year, if that. Now? You'd get 10 a week in The Irish Times.

IN the end, she seems to have decided that as much as possible had been achieved (within the limits of the office) and perhaps felt she didn't have a vision to carry on for another seven years.

"She could have continued to achieve in the way she had been but the new vision would not have been there to carry forward into a new millennium. The vitality the office demands and deserves wouldn't have been there," said an adviser.

The decision not to run again was taken in the last week of February, just before her latest trip to Rwanda. Almost immediately after her return, she went to Italy and the Vatican. Back in Dublin after seeing the Pope, she had to receive President Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, last Monday.

On Tuesday, she had seven public engagements and, besides, Tuesday is Cabinet day - a time when Government time is short.

"Wednesday kind of presented itself as the natural day to do it. The Taoiseach was not as hard pressed as on Tuesday and she had only one public engagement the Abbey that night.

The announcement was carefully stage-managed. "She had to be at the Aras and available. People had to hear it from her first - without media interpretation getting in the way.

And that is why, within a little over an hour of the announcement being faxed to newspapers, she was talking to Charlie Bird on the News at One. Telling the people herself that she was going.

That night, the audience at the Abbey gave her a standing ovation.