Ahead lies the constitutional nightmare upon constitutional nightmares, towards which we have been walking all unawares. The nightmares are many and the nightmares are various. Take this scenario, for example. The Republic of Ireland might be the first republic since the emergence of the Communist regimes in eastern Europe at the end of the second World War to surrender control over the destiny of its constitution to its most profound opponents.
In the case of Eastern Europe, the opponents of the constitutional freedom of the republics in question were the Soviet Union and its allies; in our case, whether or not we alter the Irish Constitution might well be decided by the Democratic Unionist Party in the North.
Is it not preposterous that the constitutional future of this State should be in the thrall of outsiders like the DUP? Yet at one level it is hardly relevant whether or not one likes the DUP; for I daresay it is possible for a non-DUP person to feel warmly about the party. I confess I am not such a person; some of the darkest passions that exist in Northern Ireland are politically manifest within the DUP.
Northern veto
That it is the DUP which might have this power is merely the icing on the constitutional cake of absurdity that the "peace process" has been baking. The heart and soul of the cake throughout has been the proposition, though we - and certainly I - did not fully realise it, that the people of the Republic could vote to alter the Constitution, but that vote could then be overthrown by a veto from the North.
That is paradoxical enough: but what adds farce to the paradox is that the very people we are consulting about this Constitution are the very people who, within the rule of law, give the most powerful expression within this island of a loathing for Irish nationhood and Irish nationalism, Irish Catholicism and Irish identity: the DUP.
This is the paradox which awaits us in the extremely unlikely event of an "all-party" agreement; though of course such an agreement would not be all-party. Conspicuously outside the negotiations has been the DUP - as it was, alongside a sizeable rump of the Ulster Unionists, outside the Sunningdale settlement. The new agreement will be, supposedly, entire - as was Sunningdale; and more than Sunningdale it will effect changes in the Constitution of Ireland.
That agreement must be ratified by the electorates, North and South. What if the agreement, and the proposed constitutional changes in the Republic, are overwhelmingly ratified by the electorate here, but narrowly defeated in the North, with the DUP as the primary nay-sayer? Would not the overwhelming majority here have indicated a massive enthusiasm for the changes? Yet we are to lose them because of the opposition of a group which has never participated in the talks?
Bargaining chip
That is merely one element of the political theatre of the absurd which we are looking at here, and which through laziness or cowardice we have not faced up to. At the kernel of this particular question is the fundamental disregard we are showing for the Constitution itself. A Constitution is the beating legal heart of a republic; it pumps the lifeblood of its laws. It is not a bargaining chip to be used for advantage visa-vis this group or that. It endures, transmitting authority through generations.
If we who live under this Constitution feel it should be changed, we should not be seeking the opinions or the permission of those who specifically repudiate our Constitution, which is what will be happening when the DUP votes in the Northern referendum. We should be changing it, regardless. We should be taking it as seriously as we should be taking our passports.
In truth, we take and have taken neither all that seriously. What in other domains are vital issues of national identity have been transformed within this polity into tools of expediency. Today, passports for congenial foreigners; tomorrow, abdication of control over our constitutional future to those who abjure that Constitution.
There are other scenarios, other trackless swamps into which we could be heading. What, say, of this cross-border body with executive authority which the Government has been re-raising this week in order to keep Sinn Fein in countenance. Say, just say, that it gains the approval of both referendums. Will this cross-border authority have influence over matters in the Republic?
Presumably it will. Northern Ireland is not the Sandwich Islands. Cross-border is cross-border; executive decisions will affect either side of the divide. Political decisions could be made by an authority that is not mentioned in the Constitution, which states (article 28, section 2,) that the executive power of the State shall be exercised by or on the authority of the Government, and that (article 28, section 4, paragraph 2) the Government shall be responsible to Dail Eireann.
Legal morass
The stand-alone cross-border body will, we are assured, not be amenable to the authority of a unionist-dominated assembly; presumably, therefore, it will not be amenable to the authority of Dail Eireann either, though the constitution demands that the Government shall be responsible to Dail Eireann. Yet the executive will have power in the Republic; though it clearly has not the constitutional authority to do so.
Ahead lies a constitutional jungle, a swamp, a forest, in which Northern unionists might feel free to push for policies to the detriment of Roscommon, or wherever. Certainly in this legal morass, every single dissident group could seek clarification through the Supreme Court, with unforeseen (and almost certainly unforeseeable) consequences, as Chris McGimpsey has already shown us.
Once again the rule of elected law-maker will be surrendered to the rule of unelected law-interpreter - and this time to propitiate and accommodate those who have been operating outside the rule of law for the past quarter-century or more. God help us all.