The Republic is a very different place now to what it was when he was a student at Trinity College (from 1961 to 1963), Dr Eames said.
And one of the most important things for the churches to recognise was that behind all that had happened, "secularism has come of age in Ireland". It was also important to realise the amount of good in Ireland, such as the continuing generosity of the Irish people to the Third World. All the churches had to accept the days of commanding a captive audience were over, and what they did was now more important than what they said.
His own church was losing young people after Confirmation, and this was also the experience in the Catholic Church, his colleagues there said. "The churches have to grow up and recognise that in this generation so often it is the media that is the pulpit."
They were "bound" to examine how they communicated, not least in a context where Ireland had the highest proportion of young people in Europe. They were losing the young. They needed to be more relevant. The one thing they had to offer was Jesus Christ, in the sense of the broad tradition of which that name was the theological expression. They must be more pertinent, and show that they meant what they said.
More generally he "admired greatly" the way Ireland had taken its place in Europe and its service with the UN peacekeeping forces. He had had the privilege of visiting those troops abroad, he said.
People in the Republic had a major contribution to make in supporting and understanding people in Northern Ireland, and they should realise what they say had a great effect there. "The South has a moral responsibility to look North," he said.
he agreed there were some differences between church members on either side of the Border. For instance, in the North, they would identify themselves as Protestants, while in the South they preferred to be identified as Church of Ireland. It was just a question of emphasis. It was also the case that at times Northern members felt they had more in common with their Roman Catholic neighbours than with their co-religionists south of the Border, and vice-versa.
But he was greatly encouraged by the degree to which Church of Ireland members had become involved in public life in the South, "out of all proportion to their numbers". Members in the Republic were totally integrated and that pleased him greatly. He was proud of the role they were playing.
The church's population in the South had balanced out eight to nine years ago, and the evidence was that it had stabilised. Now about 2.5 per cent of the Republic's population was Church of Ireland, out of a total 3.8 per cent which was non-Catholic. The inter-church marriage situation had improved and there were more jobs available.
Where inter-church marriage was concerned, things "have come a long way", he said, though there were still problems in parts of Ireland when it came to the interpretation of Catholic requirements. But, in the context, it was important for all churches to recognise the numbers who were now saying they didn't want a church marriage at all, in any church.