The Walsh visas to let young unemployed persons in Northern Ireland and the Border counties of the Republic get training in the US were hailed as an imaginative American contribution to the peace process.
The British and Irish governments expressed their gratitude. The Irish Immigration Reform Movement in New York, which thought up the idea, was delighted. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill patted each other on the back for showing how they can come together when it is a question of promoting peace in Ireland.
Considering how long it took to get other Irish visa schemes through Congress, the Walsh visas went through like an express train.
All that was last October when the Bill, called the Irish Peace Process Cultural and Training Program Act, sailed through Congress. Now 12,000 young men and women in the poorer areas on both sides of the Border would get a chance to come to the US for three years, learn new skills and experience living in a pluralistic, multi-cultural society.
After three years they would return with their new skills and help in the regeneration of the economies in their local areas. In Northern Ireland this would mean buttressing the aims of the Belfast Agreement to end murderous divisions between nationalist and unionist communities.
But today, Mr Jim Walsh, the Republican Congressman from New York who pushed the visas through Congress, is disillusioned. After all the work there is no money to set the system up.
It will not need much funding. About $3 million in salaries for each of the three years of the scheme for the 25 staff who will process the applications. Then about another $2 million for computers, setting up a database and travel expenses.
Mr Walsh says: "I'm pretty frustrated because we got this Bill passed. Everyone was enthusiastic and we exceeded all expectations. But the State Department has said `we don't have the money to implement these visas'."
Mr Walsh is especially annoyed because at the Speaker's lunch on Capitol Hill last St Patrick's Day, he sat beside President Clinton and explained the need for funding if the visas were to get off the ground this year. "He listened attentively. He took notes. He said `I'll help', and then nothing."
What particularly disappoints Mr Walsh is that a modest $840,000 would get the scheme up and running this summer and yet no way could be found to slip this amount into the huge $15 billion emergency budget which is now going through Congress. President Clinton had asked for $5.5 billion to pay for the US part in the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia but the politicians, especially Republicans, jumped on this opportunity to add $10 billion for favourite projects.
Mr Walsh says that if President Clinton had asked for funding for the visas there would have been no problem.
The White House says that funding the Walsh visas for this year could only be done at the expense of some other item as the visa scheme can hardly be called "an emergency".
What is even more surprising is that when the White House sent up its draft budget for fiscal year 2000 which begins next October, there was no provision for the $5 million the visas would need in their first full year of operation.
As the State Department is responsible for drafting the regulations overseeing the scheme Mr Walsh wonders why it did not budget for it as well. The problem is that the State Department budget has been drastically cut back for next year in accordance with spending limits agreed as part of the balanced budget agreement.
White House officials say that Mr Walsh should have tried to get another department, such as Labour, to do the funding. An official's comment that Mr Walsh "dropped the ball" in failing to get funding has not gone down well with him and his staff.
Mr Brian O'Dwyer, chairman of the Emerald Isle Immigration Centre in New York, is flying to Washington as this column is being written to lobby the White House and Vice-President Al Gore to please find the money for this year's start-up.
Mr O'Dwyer says that "there was no great enthusiasm in the bureaucracy" for the visas and he believes that Mr Walsh's view that President Clinton could have done more is "fair criticism", although it could be better directed to "a lot of other people". But Mr O'Dwyer is now hopeful he will now get a "sympathetic ear".
The Irish-American lobby is in action again.