No doubt - like me - you were much relieved to hear that IRA-Sinn Féin are investing the proceeds from the Northern Bank raid wisely: they are putting it into property. You can't go wrong with property, writes Kevin Myers.
Always a steady riser, provided that there isn't a bombing campaign to worry about. Which rather means that with so much Provisional money riding on the property market, we may presume that the IRA campaign is not going to resume.
And it's not. The IRA campaign has ended in failure, just as all previous IRA campaigns, without exception, have ended in failure. The Shinners have now put their thinking-caps on, wondering how to proceed next. Actually, they've got a lot to be pleased about. Facing an almost endless campaign which achieved little except topping harmless individuals who had "collaborated" with the forces of the crown, by maybe selling the mother of a policeman an apple, and riddled with informers, the IRA was rescued from its terminal quandary by the peace process.
What the Shinners could never, ever have expected was that conventional politicians would be so utterly obliging in the years that followed. For, a decade after the initial ceasefire, the Government has continued to act in violation of its Constitutional obligations, permitting the IRA to remain as a standing army in this Republic. Could the Shinners really have believed that, 10 years on, they would be allowed to remain at the apex of a vast network of criminality, extortion, robbery and murder, yet still be in contact with governments in London and Dublin?
Surrealism is heaped on surrealism in this grisly fungus we call the peace process. We hear Shinners complaining about the lack of progress being made by the police in investigating a killing by an IRA gang. We get almost daily exercises in oratorical sanctimony from the egregious Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin, who sounds more and more like a bishop preaching a retreat than a representative of a political party associated with a vicious terrorist army. And most ludicrously, we get calls from the US, from the likes of Teddy Kennedy, for Sinn Féin to disband the IRA.
That is like telling the barnacles on the USS Dwight Eisenhower to disband the aircraft carrier on which they're hitching a ride. The Provisional republican movement is defined by its adherence to the gun. Just look at all those young people leading the marches to commemorate the Easter Rising last weekend. They wore the uniforms of the army to which they are loyal: the terrorist army which was responsible for half of all deaths in the Troubles, including over 200 other Catholic civilians - many more than the British army killed. Republicans of various kinds were responsible for 60 per cent of all killings from 1966 to Robert McCartney.
Yet they have nonetheless created a caricature version of history in which the British become somehow responsible for the majority of the killings. "Collusion" is the magic wand which is waved over the Troubles, creating a Sinn Féin-friendly fantasy. Because with that magic "c" word, aided by its companion, "conspiracy", responsibility for almost anything may be placed wherever it is of most use to the Shinners. The assassination of the Archduke at Sarajevo? British collusion. Michael Collins's death? British collusion. The murder of John F. Kennedy? British collusion. Brian Boru? British collusion. Julius Caesar? British collusion.
Just about the only person in government in either Dublin or London who has rigorously confronted the Sinn Féin lies is Michael McDowell, and meanwhile there has been a drip-drip-drip of Provisional mythology into the popular political culture of nationalist Ireland. Most people now do not know that a very clear majority of deaths in the Troubles were caused by republicans, who killed more Catholics than did the security forces; nor do they understand the seriousness of the Provisional project.
In the early 1980s, the IRA leadership decided to insert moles into the institutions of the Irish State, rather as Communists had done in Western democracies in the 1930s. In the past quarter of a century, "sleeper" agents have been working their way up in various areas of Irish life - in broadcasting organisations, the Army and An Garda Síochána, the civil service, the trade union movement, and even the banks. The Provisionals now have friends in very high places today, stealthily and insidiously advancing the IRA project. Tiocfaidh ár lá, indeed.
As important as the strategy of subversion has been the demoralisation of the nationalist community in the North - not in the sense that its morale is low, but that its morality has effectively been eliminated. Contrary to what our Government is belatedly wishing for - a revival of SDLP fortunes following the Robert McCartney murder - the man responsible for his murder is being quietly hailed in nationalist ghettoes as a victim of vengeful family members. Sinn Féin supporters are slipping the insidious questions though their communities: Why should one man's life be allowed to imperil the peace process? Why should five sisters and a fiancée wreck Sinn Féin's negotiating position? Are they not being selfish and small-minded?
In five weeks' time, the UK general election will affirm the success of the Provisional campaign. The organisation which refused to help the police solve the murder of Robert McCartney in any way will be passionately embraced by Northern nationalists. The contamination of the peace process will thus have entered the Catholic soul there, finally liberating it from any moral reservation whatever. Like the Maguire children, whose deaths triggered the Peace People nearly 30 years ago, Robert McCartney will have died in vain.